


and the hidden frame

by wordsbysydney (sydkang)



Category: The Librarians (TV 2014)
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe, Angst, Crime Fighting, Mutual Pining, actual librarians AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-31
Updated: 2017-01-28
Packaged: 2018-05-17 00:05:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 24,364
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5846158
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sydkang/pseuds/wordsbysydney
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cassandra is trying to find a way to lose herself in her work again, to get away from everything she's lost and everything she will lose. Jake has only one good thing in his life and he won't let go of even one part of it. He has no reason to, really. Ezekiel still feels like he's looking over his shoulder all the time. He hopes he's outrun his past, but he knows that he should know better than to hope by now.</p><p>An investigation into a string of large-scale robberies lands right at the doorstep of the three librarians and they become central to the investigation when they accidentally become witnesses.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. First Day

**Author's Note:**

> "This don't feel right  
> In fact, it feels like things are escalating  
> Just last night I heard talks of a new beginning
> 
> ...
> 
> Tonight we'll dream to a better cause  
> Stand straight for the crooked ones  
> We'll set out and see how far we'll go  
> And we'll live life in a different light  
> Steadfast through the darkest night  
> Keep our heads up and eyes fixed on the road"
> 
> We're not alone - Echosmith

“Okay, Cassandra. First day. You can do this,” Cassandra muttered to herself as she stood outside the doors of the library. She’d arrived an hour early and had already spent half of that time staring at the front door from halfway across the courtyard. 

The night before, she had calculated the chances of every terrible thing that could happen, trying to fall asleep. She’d finally conked out while calculating how likely it was for an asteroid to hit.

The library was bigger than she remembered. Honestly though, she didn’t remember much about the architecture of the campus at all. She had been so focused on the numbers and equations. Everything else might as well have been white noise.

She didn’t know exactly what compelled her to do it, but at one point she had decided she wanted to be a librarian. She suspected it was at least partly the monotony and boredom, partly her parents, and partly some other reason she hadn’t really figured out yet.

She got her degree – online, of course – and now here she was: Cassandra Cillian, librarian extraordinaire. That’s what she was convincing herself that she could be.

She had just managed to enter the library when the familiar sound of “Ms. Cillian!” hit her ears. She watched as the sound waves bounced around in the air for a moment before snapping out of it and looking for their origin.

“Jenkins!” she said, smiling at the man she had considered her closest friend years ago. She gave him a quick hug, which he returned, albeit a little stiffly. He had never been one of any sort of display of affection.

“So, shall I give you a tour?” Jenkins asked, clapping his hands together. “Although, I’m sure you remember your way around well enough. I don’t think there was a day when I didn’t see you here, lurking around some obscure text or another.”

“Well then, put me to work,” Cassandra replied. Now that the determination had taken over, she felt the need to jump in, head first.

\-----

Jake Stone was completely stumped. He was sitting at a desk in his office, trying to write an article on the gallery’s most recent acquisition, and it was not going as smoothly as he would have liked. 

He blamed Jenkins. 

A few months ago, Jenkins had mentioned to him that he should potentially delegate some tasks to some of his staff. Because of that, he was stuck with an exhibition he never would have considered. 

For some reason, the exhibitions officer he had tasked with the job decided on what she called ‘mathematical art’. It really wasn’t anywhere near any of his areas of expertise. On top of that, there was something strange about some of the pieces. He couldn’t really put his finger on it, but something about them was definitely off.

He had started working at the library museum years ago, specifically choosing to work at a smaller gallery in a university over some of the larger ones because he wanted to teach. It seemed like he picked up a new job every year.

At this point, he was Professor Jake Stone, gallery curator and research librarian. It wasn’t uncommon for him to be working on three or four major projects at a time on top of teaching a couple classes.

Jenkins’ suggestion that he should delegate wasn’t unfounded, but it was also the most ridiculous thing he had ever heard. Yes, he was a little overworked, but he preferred it that way. His work was his heart and soul. His job was his life, and vice versa. He had chosen this, and he wasn’t about to let any part of it get away.

“Mr. Stone,” Jenkins said, walking into the offices with Cassandra trailing right behind him. “Good, you’re here. Let me introduce you to Cassandra Cillian, the newest edition to our team. She is rather knowledgeable on all things related to mathematics. You may find her to be an excellent resource regarding your latest acquisition.”

“Jake Stone,” he said, extending a hand to shake hers. “So, you’re a mathematician?”

“Mathematician-librarian,” Cassandra said, deliberately ignoring the feeling in the pit of her stomach that was trying to tell her that she couldn’t really call herself either of those things. 

“Mr. Stone also curates the gallery,” Jenkins said, “which has recently acquired a lovely exhibit that you might be interested in Ms. Cillian.” With that, Jenkins walked away, leaving Cassandra and Jake staring at each other in awkward silence.

“So, um, what are you working on?” Cassandra asked after one too many seconds of quiet had passed between them. She had always erred on the side of talking too much than too little, never having been comfortable with silence. This became especially true once stunned silences surrounded her exclusively.

“Oh, uh, it’s an article I’m writing about the exhibit Jenkins was talking about,” Jake said, moving over a little so that Cassandra could see. “I’m just having a bit of trouble getting the concepts into the article in a way that doesn’t sound like a robot threw up on the page,” he said. “Uh, no offence to math or anything,” he added quickly.

Cassandra smiled. “Math takes no offence,” she replied. “Not that it could, of course. Concepts can’t take offence to things.” She groaned internally at herself, wondering if she could possibly get any dorkier than she was right at that moment. 

As soon as she looked at the images, the patterns shouted out to her, their voices loud enough that she couldn’t stop herself from talking about them. She knew she was rambling, but she couldn’t help herself. She got so absorbed by it that she very nearly forgot that Jake was even there.

\-----

“I love this one,” she said, pointing at an image of a sculpture. “Everything is interconnected, expanding out from a single origin. Nothing is added or taken away. Just shifted from one form to another.” She watched as the patterns folded and unfolded in front of her, not minding for once that what she was seeing wasn’t really happening.

When she opened the next image, she noticed immediately that something about it was strange, but just as she was about to mention it, the computer flickered, distorting the image before it shut off entirely.

“Shit,” Jake said, not seeming surprised by the computer’s malfunction. He tried pressing some buttons on the keyboard to no avail. “Give me a minute,” he said, getting up and going to the phone at the end of the hall.

Without the images to distract her, Cassandra noticed the notepad that Jake had been writing on. Even just from the cursory glance she gave it, she could tell that he had written down almost every word she had spoken in the last couple hours.

“Just get down here Jones.” Jake’s voice carried down the hall, his exasperation at whoever was on the other side very clear. 

“Sorry about that,” he said when he came back to where they were sitting. “Someone should be down to fix this soon.”

“Who?” Cassandra asked.

“Ezekiel Jones, at your service,” Ezekiel said, coming in as if he had been on the sidelines, waiting for the perfect moment to make his entrance. “Although, like I’ve said before, you could get an actual IT guy to do this.”

“Yes, but if I did, you wouldn’t have the chance to brag about how great you are at it,” Jake said, rolling his eyes. His arms were crossed as if he was very annoyed by the situation, but Cassandra could see a hint of a grin.

“Just ‘great’?” Ezekiel asked, stopping what he was doing to look at Jake, mock-wounded. “I’m hurt.” He turned back, saying “abracadabra” as the computer flickered back to life. “Honestly Stone, I don’t know why you insist on using this thing. It’s ancient. It’s probably older than Jenkins.”

“I heard that Mr. Jones,” Jenkins said, turning the corner right at that moment.

“Hey, Jenkins,” Ezekiel said, trying to save himself. “How’s it going? I just fixed this computer, in record time might I add, and now,” he floundered for a beat before finding an excuse, “I am going to get a coffee. Need anything?”

“No, Mr. Jones,” Jenkins replied, seeming more amused by the interaction than anything else. “Perhaps you could take Ms. Cillian with you. Re-acquaint her with the campus?”

“Sure,” Ezekiel said, taking the opportunity for a clean exit at full speed. “Come on new girl. Black coffee for you, right?” he said to Cassandra and Jake respectively, not waiting for an answer from either of them before heading out the door. Cassandra followed after him, feeling like she had just met a cartoon character rather than a human being.

\-----

Ezekiel took the stairs two steps at a time, taking care not to spill his sorely needed caffeine fix. He hadn’t been getting a lot of sleep lately. It felt like, for the past few nights, his brain had been worrying about something that it hadn’t let him in on yet.

It was a pattern his subconscious had put together ages ago. Some creeping suspicion that something strange was going on. But it wasn’t until that morning that it clicked in any sort of concrete way. 

What he had been looking into before he had been so rudely interrupted had confirmed his suspicions: He had a copycat. A really good one too. 

Good enough that even he could have sworn it was his work. But he knew it wasn’t, which meant that someone was deliberately trying to make it look like he was back in the game. Or they were trying to call him out. He hadn’t really figured that part out yet.

Whatever the reason, it definitely wasn’t good. 

Certain circumstances had led to his untimely retirement a few years back. Since then, he hadn’t so much as shoplifted a pack of gum. He couldn’t risk it. There was too much at stake. Eventually, he got bored enough and got a job.

So here he was, a friendly neighbourhood librarian. How the mighty did fall.

But despite himself, he enjoyed working at the library. It helped that it also came with the benefit of being able to set up a secure network in a place that wasn’t his home. He needed to keep tabs on certain aspects of his past.

It wasn’t that he cared that someone was pretending to be him. Part of him was kind of flattered, imitation being the sincerest form of flattery and all that. 

He was more concerned about the other people who would have figured out the pattern. And they would have figured it out by now. These were people who had spent years tracking those patterns. These were people who would knock on, or, more likely knock down, his door, asking questions.

He really didn’t need people asking questions.

“Hey,” a voice he didn’t recognize called from the doorway. Ezekiel nearly jumped out of his chair, being on edge as he was. He looked up to see Cassandra, holding way too many books, even for a librarian.

“You know we have carts, right?” Ezekiel asked, willing his heart to stop beating so damned fast. 

“Yeah,” Cassandra said, putting the books down on Ezekiel’s desk before her arms gave out. “I kind of just picked these up while I was looking for something else. Why are you here so late?”

“I could ask you the same thing,” Ezekiel said, his eyes flicking to his screen for a split second. Truth be told, Ezekiel hadn’t realized that so much time had passed.

“I lost track of time,” Cassandra said, trying and failing to hide the slight giddiness in her voice. “But I’m probably going to head out soon.” She fiddled with the books on the table, straightening them out.

“You know what, I should get out of here too,” Ezekiel said. He rubbed at his eyes as they adjusted to the darkness of the room after staring at his computer for so long. He shut down his computer and grabbed his stuff. “I’ll, uh, see you tomorrow.”

Even with her limited experience with Ezekiel, Cassandra still noticed how different he was from earlier that day. But before she could even consider asking if something was wrong, he was gone. She wondered if his exit was calculated to prevent such a conversation.

\-----

Cassandra managed to get all the books she had gathered to her office. The offices were all dark by now – most of the staff had gone home hours ago – but she saw a solitary light shining in Jake’s office. 

“If I ask you why you’re here so late, are you going to get weird and run away?” she asked, standing in the doorway.

“What?” Jake replied, part confused by the question and part flustered by being dragged out of his work.

“Never mind,” Cassandra said, mentally cursing herself. Why did she even bother trying to be funny? She was not funny. “Um, how’s the article?”

“Just putting the finishing touches on it thanks to you,” Jake said. The awkward silence washed over them again, both of them wishing they had something, anything, to say. 

“Well, I’ll see you tomorrow,” Cassandra said, breaking what felt like an everlasting silence. Jake nodded at her, turning back to his article as soon as Cassandra left. 

\-----

“We found him,” Eve said, bursting into Flynn’s office. “Let’s go.” She grabbed his jacket off the coat rack and his keys off the table.

“Do you mean?”

“What else could I be talking about?” Eve said, waving him to the door as if she was guiding a landing plane. “Let’s go. If we leave right now we’ll be there by morning.”


	2. The All-Nighter

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "I've been trying to do it right  
> I've been living a lonely life  
> I've been sleeping here instead  
> I've been sleeping in my bed"
> 
> Ho Hey - The Lumineers

“The kid used his real name?” Flynn asked as they drove down the highway. He was looking through the file that Eve had brought with them. “Talk about cocky.”

“Well, it did take us this long to find him,” Eve replied. “Okay, so when we go in, we need to make sure that we spot him before he spots us.”

“Or else he could make a run for it,” Flynn said, nodding. “So, I’ll go in first.”

“What? No way,” Eve said. “That makes no sense. You’re not even law enforcement Flynn.”

“Technicality,” Flynn said. “We need to play to our strengths here. I’m much more inconspicuous than you are, and you’re much better at the whole ‘chase and take down’ procedure.”

“No way,” Eve replied, repeating her previous statement. “We go in together. I’m not letting you go in unprotected.”

“You talk about this kid like he’s a dangerous murderer or something,” Flynn said, moving on from a subject that Eve obviously was not going to bend on. He’d long since stopped trying to get Eve to stop protecting him. “Didn’t he just steal a bunch of stuff?” 

“Ezekiel Jones is dangerous,” Eve said as she parked the car. She turned to look at Flynn. “Don’t let him fool you.”

Eve and Flynn had crossed paths a couple years ago when a dig Flynn was supervising had been robbed. They became partners soon after, even though they hadn’t been able to solve his case. Eve realized that Flynn was a valuable asset. Flynn caught the adventure bug. There was no avoiding it. 

Since then, they had solved murders, heists, kidnappings, and pretty much everything in between, but that first case hung over their heads like light-bulb that was waiting to be turned on.

“Here we go,” Eve said, taking a deep breath. They approached the motel from the car, Eve with a hand ready to reach for her gun at a moment’s notice. 

They knew from their intel which room was registered to ‘Ezekiel Jones’, so that’s where they went first, Flynn picking the lock while Eve pretended not to see. 

“Plausible deniability,” she had explained the first time he’d picked a lock in front of her and she looked away.

They went in on her count and were faced with a completely empty room. The only thing that occupied the room besides the two of them was an open laptop sitting on the middle of the bed.

“Okay. There’s a laptop,” Flynn said, looking around the room as if he expected someone to jump out from some hidden location. 

“Could be a bomb,” Eve said, approaching it carefully.

“Or, it could be a laptop,” Flynn said. 

Eve gave Flynn a look he knew too well now, motioning him to stay where he was while she went to turn on the laptop. The screen lit up as the computer booted up.

“Okay,” Eve said, relaxing. “It’s a laptop.”

\-----

Jake woke up with a start, groaning as he realized that he had fallen asleep in his office again. Luckily, it was still early enough that he could go home for a second before he was supposed to show up for his shift. 

It would keep Jenkins off his back. 

At this point in the morning, the only people around were the students who had also been there all night, studying for the midterms that were just around the corner.

He quickly gathered up his belongings, figuring that he should get out of there as fast as possible. As he left, though, he ran into Ezekiel.

“What are you doing here so early?” he said at the same time Ezekiel said, “are you just leaving now?” 

“You need to get a life dude,” Ezekiel said, after they had both spent a moment processing the other’s question.

“Seriously, what are you doing here?” Jake asked, ignoring Ezekiel’s comment. “You can’t be coming into work at 6 a.m. in the morning.”

“I could be,” Ezekiel replied. “I have a lot of stuff to get done today.” He shrugged, not making eye contact with Jake. 

Jake knew that Ezekiel was not telling him something, but he didn’t push it. As a rule, he didn’t push things with Ezekiel. It was something that he’d figured out pretty early on in their acquaintance-ship. If Ezekiel wanted to tell him, he would tell him. If not, there was very little in this world that would convince him to do so.

“Alright then,” Jake said, rolling his eyes to let Ezekiel know that he wasn’t buying it. Just because he knew better than to push the subject didn’t mean he wasn’t going to let Ezekiel know that he thought he was full of shit. “I’ll see you in a couple hours.”

“You really need to stop sleeping here,” Ezekiel said, his tone of voice revealing something that Jake didn’t quite understand. He nodded but said nothing more, making a mental note to be sneakier when he accidentally spent the night at the library. 

\-----

The rest of the day after that went surprisingly smoothly. Jake, Cassandra, and Ezekiel worked in close proximity to each other since their individual projects kept bringing up questions that the others could better answer.

“What’s Fractal Geometry?”  
“Can you give me a hand? A student just asked me to help them research computer coding. Not really my area of expertise.”  
“Quick question. Is this sculpture valuable at all?”

They worked well together, interestingly enough.

As the day turned into evening, they found themselves alone in the offices. The rest of the staff had long since gone home for the day, but the three of them stayed behind. Cassandra was researching, somehow managing to spread out about fifty books all around her and reading through all of them. Ezekiel’s area looked similar, with his notes scattered about and with about fifty tabs open on multiple screens.

He wasn’t even sure that they were working, but he left well enough alone.

“I’m going to head out,” Ezekiel said, shoving all his notes into his bag. Cassandra looked up from her nest of books and at the clock behind her.

“Oh, I didn’t realize how late it was,” she said. “I should go home too.”

“Yeah, I just need to check something in the gallery,” Jake said, not because he really needed to check something, but because he really wanted to avoid the potentially small-talk infested walk to their cars. “I’ll see you guys tomorrow.”

“You know, I’ve never seen the gallery,” Cassandra said.

“You should go in after hours,” Ezekiel replied. “During the day it’s always filled with students trying to get brownie points from ‘Professor Stone’ over there. Annoying.”

“Jake let you go in after hours?” Cassandra asked.

“If you consider using a crappy security system ‘letting’, which I do,” Ezekiel replied.

“Okay, you’re helping me set up a new security system tomorrow,” Jake said, shaking his head. “And,” he hesitated for a second. “I guess I could show you around right now?”

“I’ll come with,” Ezekiel said, slinging his bag over his shoulder. “I bet I know the place better than you do Stone.” He turned to Cassandra, explaining that he was “really good with layouts.”

“Great!” Cassandra said, seeming genuinely excited by the concept. 

\-----

“I said this,” Cassandra said, pointing at the sculpture she had looked at with Jake the day before. It had a lengthy description attached to it. “ ‘This sculpture has been described by experts as…’ ” she read. “I’m not an expert.”

“Well,” Jake replied, shrugging. “I wanted to include it. It captured the essence of the piece. The entire exhibit, really. That counts as expert-like in my books.”

“You even cited me,” Cassandra said, looking at the tiny print at the bottom of the description. “Thank you.”

The three of them walked around the gallery for a little while, commenting on some of the pieces, but never feeling obligated to talk if they had nothing to say. 

“Hey,” Ezekiel said, calling them over to where he was standing. “That wasn’t there before.” He pointed at a painting.

“How would you know that?” Jake asked, going to inspect the painting. “How often do you break in here?”

Jake examined the supposed imposter. After a moment, he said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. This painting’s been here for months.”

“I’m not talking about the painting,” Ezekiel said, taking it off the wall. “I’m talking about the frame. It’s different.”

“Well, maybe someone changed it,” Jake replied.

“Yeah, like anyone who works here would dare to do that without consulting you first.”

“Okay,” Jake said, conceding him on that point. “Well, why would someone leave a painting but take the frame?”

Ezekiel handed the painting to Jake and started taking all the paintings in the gallery down, inspecting them one by one despite Cassandra and Jake’s protests. Jake followed after Ezekiel, re-hanging all the paintings he was taking down. Eventually, he caught up with him just as he was about to take apart one of the frames.

“What the heck Jones?” Jake asked, more confused than anything else.

“Ezekiel, what are you doing?” Cassandra asked at the same time.

“This has something inside it,” Ezekiel replied. “That other frame probably had something inside it too. Something valuable. It’s pretty smart, actually. I mean, who would steal a frame and leave behind a painting? Most people wouldn’t notice.”

“But you’re not most people,” Jake said, slight annoyance creeping into his voice. 

“Obviously,” Ezekiel replied. 

As Jake started to say, “Jones, get away from that painting,” they heard the click of a gun being loaded. Jake froze for a moment, knowing that they were the only ones who should be in the gallery at that time. The tell tale sound of steps echoed in the dimly lit gallery.

“Maybe it’s a security guard?” Cassandra said, although her voice dropping to a whisper signified that she thought otherwise.

“Not a security guard.” The person belonging to the footsteps and the gun appeared, placing the barrel of the gun very close to the back of Ezekiel’s head, telling him to “get up slowly and step away from the painting.”

Ezekiel’s eyes flicked up and met Jake’s, searching for a reaction on Jake’s end to gauge what he should do next, presumably because Jake didn’t have his back turned. Jake shook his head just slightly. Most people would have assumed it was nothing, a twitch or something, but like he’d said earlier – Ezekiel Jones was not most people.

Once Ezekiel was out of their way, the robber grabbed the painting and bolted. Jake waited until he heard the familiar sound of the gallery doors shutting before speaking up.

“We need to call the police,” he said, rushing directly into proactive action. He wondered where he had put his phone, silently cursing himself for never keeping track of it. He headed for the lobby of the gallery, trying to recall whether or not he had to dial out before calling 9-1-1 or if it didn’t matter since it was an emergency number.

“No, wait,” Ezekiel said, catching up with him. 

“Ezekiel,” Jake said, stopping him dead in his tracks. “Someone just put a gun to your head and stole a painting from my gallery. We need to call the police.”

“Jake’s right,” Cassandra said. “This is a crime scene. We need to –“

“Call the police,” Ezekiel said, finishing her sentence. “I get it. Okay. Um, let me do it. There’s someone I know who can, uh, deal with this.” 

“Who are you going to call?” Cassandra asked.

“The ghostbusters,” Ezekiel replied, getting a smile and a head-shake from Cassandra.

He pulled out his cell phone and, after what, to Jake, looked like a moment’s hesitation, dialled a number he apparently knew off by heart but didn’t have saved in his contacts.

“Hey. Uh, it’s me,” Ezekiel said to whomever was on the other end. “Okay, before you say anything else, uh –“ He took a deep breath. Jake didn’t think he’d ever seen Ezekiel look conflicted before. “You know I wouldn’t call unless it was important. Yeah. I’m not going anywhere. No tricks. Just get here. Yeah. I’ll text it to you.”

“Who did you call?” Cassandra asked again. Jake looked at her and saw that she was looking at him, trying to see if he was just as confused as she seemed to be. He shook his head and shrugged. He had no idea what was going on either. 

“Just someone I know,” Ezekiel replied while looking and typing intently at his phone. “I’m sending her the address now. She’ll be here in, like, half an hour. Less if she speeds, which she probably will.”

“Okay then,” Jake said, wondering if he should bother asking.

“How do you know a cop? What’s her name? Is she a cop? I mean, she’s some kind of police officer, right?” Cassandra asked before Jake could make a decision either way.

“Eve Baird. She’s with the Feds. Or at least, she was when I knew her,” Ezekiel replied, pointedly staring at his phone and not at them.

His response seemed to satisfy Cassandra, so Jake didn’t mention that Ezekiel had left out the answer to the first question. Besides, they had bigger things to worry about than Ezekiel’s connection to some cop.

\-----

“Slow down!” Flynn said to Eve as she sped through yet another red light.

“I’ll slow down once we get there,” Eve replied, her eyes focused on the road.

“That’s not really how it works!” Flynn said. “He said he was staying put. Nobody is in any immediate danger. The road is not crumbling behind us. We can afford to slow down a little.”

“It’s not the first time he’s said that,” Eve said, maintaining her speed. “I’m not falling for it this time.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am going to be updating this once a week (hopefully, hopefully, hopefully), so stay tuned!


	3. The All-Nighter: Part II

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Life's too short to even care at all  
> I'm losing my mind  
> losing my mind  
> losing control..."
> 
> Cough Syrup - Young the Giant

_17 minutes later_

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you stay still for this long without working on something,” Jake said to Ezekiel.

“Well, tonight’s a night for firsts, isn’t it?” Ezekiel said. He was staring at the ceiling, focusing on the patterns in the moulding. Anything to take his mind off of the current situation.

“Has this place always been so…weird?” Cassandra asked, standing in the middle of the room where, minutes ago, someone had held them up at gunpoint. Ezekiel looked over at Jake to see if he had any idea what Cassandra was talking about, but Jake just shrugged. “There’s something off about it,” Cassandra said, continuing on. “The amount of tiles on the floor isn’t right, and that wall cuts off at that corner in a weird place.”

“Maybe it’s on purpose?” Ezekiel said even as his brain starting working through the puzzle that Cassandra had presented.

“Nobody designs a room like that,” Jake said, shaking his head. “Not unless there’s a reason.”

Ezekiel jumped into motion, recognizing the implications of what Jake and Cassandra were saying. 

“That’s why we didn’t see them when we came in,” Ezekiel said, running his hand along the wall, searching for inconsistencies. “There’s a door here somewhere.”

“You’re talking about a hidden room?” Cassandra asked.

“Could be,” Ezekiel said, stopping in his tracks when he felt a nearly imperceptible switch in the bottom right corner of the wall. “Got it.”

“Don’t move a muscle,” a voice that Ezekiel recognized as Eve said. He couldn’t see what was going on behind him, but from the sudden silence, Ezekiel could tell that, for the second time that night, there was a gun pointed at him. “Turn around, slowly.”

He complied, deciding that the secret door could wait.

“Hey Agent Baird,” Ezekiel said. “I wasn’t expecting you for a few more minutes.”

“I drive fast,” Eve replied.

“I remember,” Ezekiel said, smirking when Eve’s jaw tightened. He never could resist pushing people’s buttons. Out of all his bad habits, it was the one that got him into trouble the most.

For the next minute of conversation, the two talked like they forgot there were other people in the room who probably needed to be filled in on the situation. If Ezekiel Jones was the type to be nostalgic, he might have noted that this meeting was pretty similar to their first meeting, years ago. 

“What’s your angle here, Jones?”  
“Don’t you have to read me my rights first, officer?”  
“I’m not arresting you.”  
“Not yet.”

That made Eve falter a little, pausing for a second before continuing.

“Shut up. Don’t think you can get me with that.”  
“Did you get my present?”  
“Maybe.”  
“Did you think it was a bomb? You so did. You always think things are bombs.”  
“Sometimes they are.”  
“You were only right that one time.”  
“Once is enough.”  
“I called you for a reason, you know.”  
“Yeah, I’m hoping that reason is guilt.”  
“Wow, did you go and become an optimist since I saw you last?”  
“You know what? I think I am going to arrest you.”  
“It wouldn’t stick.”  
“Maybe, but I could throw you in a tiny jail cell overnight.”

This time it was Ezekiel who faltered, wondering for a split second if Eve would really make good on that threat. Two years ago, he wouldn’t have thought so, but things were different now. A lot had happened.

“Just tell me what’s going on Ezekiel,” Eve said, sighing. She holstered her gun, crossing her arms in front of her. Ezekiel took that as a positive sign.

“Don’t know yet,” Ezekiel said. “We were just about to find the next piece of the puzzle when you barged in.”

Certain that Eve wouldn’t stop him this time, he pressed the switch, opening a panel in the wall.

“That’s not supposed to be there,” Jake said at the same time Cassandra said, “it’s a secret room.”

“Okay,” Eve said. “That is a pretty big puzzle piece.”

\-----

_2 hours later_

The five of them were holed up in the librarians’ offices after taking inventory of everything that they had found out. 

Jake had insisted on sticking around because it was his gallery, “even if someone’s been violating it”, Cassandra stayed as well, saying that she was “in too deep to leave now”, and Ezekiel figured that Eve wouldn’t let him leave even if he suggested it, so he didn’t bother suggesting it.

The actual inventory of what was in the room didn’t take long, since the room was empty. The room was small and dimly lit. The only thing of note was the door that led to a passageway they presumed led out of the library.

“Why bother hiding things in frames if you have a secret room?” Cassandra had asked.

Ezekiel and Eve had both tried to answer at once, their voices overlapping before either of them had a chance to realize the other was speaking. The answer, which Eve ended up explaining, boiled down to “they needed to get things in here somehow”.

They figured that the operation was conducted in three steps.

Step 1: They hid stuff in the frames of art pieces they knew were coming to the gallery.  
Step 2: Someone came in to move the frames into the secret room.  
Step 3: They moved things out of the secret room via the passageway.

“Everything points to an inside job,” Eve said, pointedly looking at Ezekiel.

“Look Baird,” Ezekiel said. “You know that if it was me, I would be taking full credit. I wouldn’t lie, especially about this, because it’s actually pretty brilliant. I mean, besides the fact that you have to rely on a team. That wouldn’t work for me.”

“You three, make a list of people who had access to the gallery. Narrow down our suspect pool,” Eve said, deliberately not commenting on what Ezekiel said. “I’m going to make some calls. See if your evidence stands up. Flynn, keep on eye on him.”

Ezekiel had shared all the evidence he had compiled about his copycat. It was clear to him now that those robberies – well-known objects being stolen from high-security locations – were to distract from the real heist. 

On some level, it was kind of a relief. There wasn’t any reason to hide anymore. It was a level of relief with about ten levels of total panic above it, but it was still there. 

“Dude, why did you write your own name down?” Ezekiel asked when he saw Jake’s name on the list of potential suspects they were supposed to be making. “You know you didn’t do it.”

“I’m just being thorough,” Jake replied. “I had access to the gallery.”

“But you didn’t do it,” Ezekiel said.

“But not writing my name down would be suspicious.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Ezekiel said, crossing Jake’s name off the list. “I’m also crossing off my name.”

“You admitted to breaking into the gallery,” Jake said. “And you’re a thief.”

“This isn’t my style,” Ezekiel said. After the shock of everything had worn off, the inevitable questioning of Ezekiel’s past had started. Knowing that, at this point, they wouldn’t let it go, Ezekiel told them the truth. Well, the watered down version of the truth. They knew how he met Baird, how they used to work together, and how he had had to disappear. That was enough. “And Cassandra’s off the list too.”

“What? Why am I a suspect?” Cassandra asked, coming over to where the two of them were. 

“You’re not,” Ezekiel said.

“Okay, I made a few calls and nobody knows anything,” Eve said, walking back into the room and saving Jake from having to explain. “Or, at least, that’s what they’re claiming. Everyone I talked to is saying that it has to be a coincidence. But I don’t believe in coincidences, and as much as it pains me to say it, I think Jones is right.”

“Of course I am.”

“You know I can arrest you, right?” Eve said.

“Ah, but you won’t,” Ezekiel replied, pretty certain that he was right about that. “You need me on this case. Me and my contacts. Just like old times.”

“Don’t your contacts think you’re dead?” she asked, narrowing her eyes at him.

“Well, someone knows I’m here,” he replied. “There’s no point in laying low now. I can tell all my contacts that I’ve resurrected.”

“Wait, what do you mean ‘someone knows you’re here’? How do you figure?” Jake asked.

“Because this location is not at all ideal, unless you take into consideration that a potential fall guy – me – works here,” Ezekiel replied. “Given my rather impressive portfolio –“

“Also known as a criminal record,” Eve interjected.

“Everyone would assume that I did it,” Ezekiel said, finishing his explanation. “And I resent that. I don’t have a criminal record. That would imply that I got caught. Ezekiel Jones doesn’t get caught. Yet another reason why I would be helpful.”

“Fine,” Eve said. “Fine. For now.”

\-----

The moment he was able to get away from the rest of them for a moment without rousing suspicion, Ezekiel made a call.

“Hey, it’s me again,” he said when the call went directly to voicemail. “I don’t know if you’re getting my messages. Uh, wherever you are, you need to get out. It’s not safe anymore.”


	4. Unexpected Collaboration

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Face my direction, I wanna see you better dear  
> You're a distraction from everything that I fear
> 
> ...
> 
> Sometimes, I think I can fade away   
> in the light of an ever sunny day"
> 
> Turn to white - She & Him

The next couple weeks were so busy that Cassandra could swear that she could see the pages flying off the calendar. 

Things had moved lightning fast the first couple days. The gallery was blocked off. The librarians became “consultants” on the case. Eve and Flynn had set up shop in the librarians’ offices on a “semi-permanent temporary” basis, Eve making some excuse about it making sense because the crime scene was right there.

Cassandra was pretty sure that Eve just wanted to keep an eye on Ezekiel.

The five of them had fallen into a kind of rhythm, compiling evidence and looking for patterns. A good chunk of their work involved going through the mess of evidence that Ezekiel had gathered and sorting it into “evidence”, “potential evidence”, and “this makes very little sense” categories.

The gallery itself was now off-limits to all non-authorized personnel, but Cassandra found herself standing outside of it every day after work. She felt that gnawing feeling in her gut, the feeling she got when she was packing for a trip and was certain she had forgotten something.

“You coming?” Ezekiel said as he walked up and ducked underneath the police tape that went across the gallery’s entrance.

“You can’t do that,” Cassandra said, looking around them, sure that someone was going to jump out at any moment and reprimand them.

“Yeah, this tape is so difficult to get past,” Ezekiel replied sarcastically.

“Okay, let me rephrase,” Cassandra said, whispering. “You really shouldn’t do that.”

“Let _me_ rephrase,” Ezekiel replied. “Are you going to stand out there looking conflicted, or are you going to come with me?”

Cassandra considered for a moment, the gnawing feeling and her better judgement battling it out in her head. 

“Let’s do it,” she said, ducking under the tape that Ezekiel held up for her. 

She always did end up triple-checking her suitcase.

“How are we getting away with this?” Cassandra asked, more talking to herself than to Ezekiel. For her whole life, she’d been a rule-follower. Okay, she’d been kind of a goody-two-shoes. She’d never had a teenager-rebellious-phase or anything remotely in that realm. She’d barely begun to have a chance to think about having an early-twenties-rebellious phase before she had gotten sick.

She’d always assumed that, if people broke the rules, they got caught. The fear of getting caught plus the intense desire to please authority figures meant that she never did anything “bad”. And now here she was, not just breaking the rules, but breaking the law. Yes, it was totally benign and in order to help solve a crime, but it was still completely foreign to her. 

“If you act like you belong, most people won’t question you,” Ezekiel said, answering her question. He searched for the light switch, illuminating the dark gallery with a florescent hum when he found it. 

“What the heck are you two doing here?” Jake asked, walking in behind them.

“You did that on purpose,” Ezekiel said, evidently not at all startled by Jake. Cassandra, on the other hand, nearly jumped out of her skin and her heart felt like it was overcompensating for missing several beats. 

She really wasn’t cut out for the life of a criminal.

“Anyway,” Ezekiel said, continuing forward to the now-not-so-secret room of the gallery. He stepped right over the place where, a week ago, someone had held a gun right to his head. Cassandra wasn’t sure how he was so unaffected by the whole thing.

She wondered if it was a common occurrence in Ezekiel’s previous line of work. 

She wondered if near-death was a thing that you got used to over time.

She wondered why she wasn’t used to it yet.

Then, just when her heart was about to start functioning normally again, she noticed movement in the not-so-secret room. Jake and Ezekiel seem to notice it as well from the way they froze suddenly.

In a moment of sheer panic, Cassandra called out, “Hello?” eliciting bewildered looks from both Jake and Ezekiel. She shrugged, eyes wide, not really having an explanation for her behaviour. She just couldn’t stand the suspense of not knowing when something – or in this case, someone – was going to jump out at her.

“Hello,” a woman’s voice answered as the body attached to the voice appeared from the room and leaned against the frame of the now-not-so-secret door.

“Lamia?” Ezekiel said, relaxing when he saw who it was. “What the hell are you doing here?”

“I should be asking you that,” Lamia replied. “What the hell are you doing _here_? And you know what I’m doing here. You called me.”

“Yeah, I called you. I didn’t mean for you to come here,” Ezekiel said. “Did you listen to content of my messages?”

“Who are your friends?” Lamia asked, glancing over at Cassandra and Jake and ignoring Ezekiel’s questioning. Cassandra looked away from her when they accidentally made eye contact, not really comfortable being stared at by a stranger.

“Eve’s here,” Ezekiel said forcefully, gaining Lamia’s full attention again.

“Well, then let’s get out of here,” Lamia said after a beat. “That’s why I’m here. I came to get you. Let’s go.”

“Just,” Ezekiel stopped for a second, as if he was considering his options. He dug his keys out of his pocket and offered them to Lamia. “Go to my place. I’m assuming you know where that is.”

“You know me so well,” she replied, smiling. She grabbed his hand while she took his keys, adopting a more serious tone for a moment. “I’ll see you in a couple hours?” She waited for Ezekiel to nod before she let him go, leaving the gallery back through the secret room.

“You want to explain that?” Jake asked once Lamia was gone.

“Yeah, what just happened?” Cassandra asked, folding her arms in front of her with her hands gripping her upper arms, trying to ground herself.

“Uh,” Ezekiel replied hesitantly. “Lamia’s an old friend.”

“A criminal friend?” Jake asked, narrowing his eyes at Ezekiel. “Kind of suspicious that she’s showing up all of a sudden, isn’t it?” he continued, taking Ezekiel’s silence as confirmation.

“She showed up because I called her,” Ezekiel said, his tone shifting dramatically. Cassandra was slightly surprised that Ezekiel was coming to the defence of someone so adamantly. In the short time she had known Ezekiel, she hadn’t really gotten the impression that he was in the business of protecting anyone but himself. This Lamia woman obviously meant a lot to Ezekiel. “She has nothing to do with any of this.”

“Alright,” Jake said, seemingly willing to accept Ezekiel’s word as proof of Lamia’s innocence. “I still think we should tell Agent Baird. Your ‘friend’ broke into a crime scene. If you don’t think she had anything to do with it, fine – for now – but it would look bad if they found out she was there and you hid it.”

“Yeah, okay,” Ezekiel said after considering it for a moment. “I’ll tell her. But you’re coming with me.”

“What? Why?” Jake asked.

“I need a witness,” Ezekiel said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. “Cassandra? You good down here while I go risk my life?”

Cassandra rolled her eyes, saying, “yes, go,” and waving the two of them away. 

It would be good to look at the place without anything or anyone else getting in the way, Cassandra decided, entering the secret room. She took a breath, filling her lungs to the point where the pressure the air put on her expanding lungs was ever so slightly uncomfortable before exhaling.

It was the first time since _the event_ that she had looked at this room and the first time ever she’d been able to get a good look at it. Her memory had painted it as creepy and dark and musty, but in reality, she realized, it was just a room. Dimly lit and a little dusty, but unremarkable.

The sound of knocking made Cassandra turn. When she did, she saw the woman that Ezekiel had identified as Lamia.

“I thought you left,” Cassandra said, trying to keep her demeanour as neutral as possible. She wasn’t sure what Lamia’s motive for coming back here, or for being here at all, was. It was best to tread carefully, even if her curiosity was running at full speed.

“I nearly ran right into Baird on my way out,” Lamia explained. “Wasn’t really in the mood for a lecture, so I came back.”

“Okay,” Cassandra said, crossing her arms and adding nothing more to the conversation.

“So,” Lamia finally said after a lengthy silence. “What is Ezekiel doing here?”

“He said you were an old friend,” Cassandra said. “Why don’t you ask him yourself?”

“Well, I don’t know if you know this about him,” Lamia replied, “but if he doesn’t want to tell you something, there is literally nothing you can do to get him to tell you.”

“I’ve noticed,” Cassandra said.

“So what is Zeke doing here?” Lamia asked again.

“Zeke?” Cassandra asked, cracking a smile for a split second.

“Shit, don’t tell him I let it slip that I call him that,” Lamia said. “He’ll kill me.”

“I won’t tell him if you tell me what your intentions are,” Cassandra said, straightening her posture. “Being here, I mean. Plus, I wouldn’t want to have to tell Agent Baird that you came back here after you thought everyone was gone. It’s pretty suspicious after all.”

“Well, this is surprising,” Lamia said, smiling a little, like Cassandra hadn’t just threatened her but instead had just played an unexpected but interesting move in a game of chess. “I must say, I didn’t expect this from you,” she continued after pausing to look at Cassandra as if she was re-evaluating her. 

“You just met me,” Cassandra said, feeling like she should defend herself for some reason. “You have no idea what I’m capable of.”

“Clearly,” Lamia replied, her lips remaining slightly upturned as she continued. “Well, like I said, I was here to get Ezekiel and get out, but I have a feeling that I won’t be able to convince him to do that. Maybe I’ll stick around. Find out what his life’s like.”

“Okay then,” Cassandra said, relaxing her arms. “Well,” she continued, not wanting to remain in this somewhat awkward situation for longer than necessary, “neither of us is supposed to be here.”

“‘Supposed to’ and ‘meant to’ are often at odds,” Lamia replied. She turned to leave, calling “goodbye Cassandra,” behind her as she did. Cassandra stood there for a moment, trying to recall if she had ever actually introduced herself.

\-----

The next day, Cassandra walked into the offices that were typically empty at this time and found Lamia, leaning back in the chair she was sitting in with her feet up on a desk. Cassandra stopped dead in her tracks, doing her best ‘deer in headlights’ imitation.

“Nice to see you again so soon darling,” Lamia said, smiling and looking totally comfortable.

“What are you doing here?” Cassandra asked, unfreezing and attempting to act nonchalant. “I thought you wanted to steer clear of Agent Baird.”

“I did,” Lamia replied. “But I changed my mind. I’ve decided to help with your little project here.”

“Why?”

“Does it matter?” Lamia asked back. “I can help. It doesn’t really matter why, does it?”

“It does if you have a hidden agenda that leads to my friends being put in danger,” Cassandra replied.

“Let me ask you a question,” Lamia said, taking her feet off the desk so she could turn to fully face Cassandra. “You haven’t known Ezekiel very long, but you trust him. You like him enough to be worried about him. This is all in spite of the fact that he lied to you about who he is.”

“What’s your question?” Cassandra said, not denying any of it. It was true. She wasn’t sure if she had a naturally trusting nature or if it was because they had gone through quite a bit in the short time they’d known each other, but she trusted Ezekiel. Jake too, and Eve, and Flynn.

“Why?” Lamia asked.

“I’ll answer your ‘why’ if you answer my ‘why’,” Cassandra replied.

Lamia narrowed her eyes, considering the offer before nodding her assent, saying, “Last night, Ezekiel told me everything that’s happened since we saw each other last. I knew I could help, so I decided to help.”

“That’s it?” Cassandra said incredulously.

“Look, we’ve known each other for a long time,” Lamia replied, offering up an explanation. “He’s like a brother to me.” Lamia’s eyes flicked away for a second, obviously uncomfortable with this subject matter. When she returned to what seemed to be her typical, slightly haughty attitude, she said, “your turn.”

“Fine,” Cassandra said, sighing even though she was the one who had suggested this exchange of information. “Everyone has secrets, and everyone has reasons for keeping them. I get that. Keeping secrets doesn’t make you untrustworthy or a bad person.”

“This conversation is over Jones,” Eve said, entering the room with Flynn and Ezekiel following soon after.

“Look, I trust her. Isn’t that enough?” Ezekiel asked.

“Hell no.” Eve sat down at what had become her desk and started shuffling around papers, organizing the perpetually messy desk. She tried to keep it tidy, but with four other people constantly throwing things on her desk, it was a losing battle.

“Baird, come on. You were saying that my contacts might not pan out because I’ve been presumed dead for two years,” Ezekiel said.

“And I believe that you mentioned something about how that didn’t matter,” Eve replied, keeping her eyes squarely focused on her organizing.

“Lamia approaching them will be way less suspicious.”

“He’s right you know,” Flynn said, chiming in.

“Flynn, are you serious?” Eve said incredulously, looking up at him.

“See, even Flynn agrees with me,” Ezekiel said.

Eve walked over to where Cassandra and Lamia were, their previous conversation having halted when Ezekiel, Eve, and Flynn had emerged from one of the inner offices. 

“You are going to tell us everything we need to know. You will not get into any trouble and, most importantly, you will not get anyone else into any trouble, is that clear?” Eve said, staring Lamia down, who seemed completely unaffected by Eve’s mandates.

“Clear as crystal Agent Baird,” Lamia replied.

“Great,” Eve said, her tone betraying her apprehension with this turn of events. “Let’s get started.”

“Wait, where’s Jake?” Cassandra asked, looking around.

“He’s going to be late today,” Ezekiel replied. “Which, by the way, I personally support one hundred percent. I’ve been telling him to stop being so punctual. You know, maybe we should wait –“

“Let’s get started,” Eve said, cutting him off.

\-----

At that moment, Jake was sitting in his car in front of the house he had grown up in, building up the nerve to ring the doorbell. 

It wasn’t as easy as he thought it was going to be, coming back to this house. 

As soon as he saw it, he was hit with the realization that he hadn’t been here in years. Not since he’d left the family business and the family that came with it. That realization along with all the memories this place held had paralyzed him.

So there he was, sitting in his car, staring at the place he had once called home.

He wasn’t sure that this was a good idea. In fact, he was pretty certain that this was a bad idea, but it was the only way to be sure.


	5. The Family Stone

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All I did was fail today...
> 
> All we do – Oh Wonder

“What the hell are you doing here Jake?” Isaac asked immediately after opening the door. He kept one hand on the door, his subtle not-so-subtle way of making it very clear that Jake was not welcome there.

“It was you, wasn’t it,” Jake stated, getting right down to business. That’s how his dad liked it. No extraneous small talk. No ‘how have you beens’ or ‘it’s been a whiles’. 

“I’ve had a long night Jake,” his father replied. “If you want something, spit it out.” Even though his father was attempting to act like he had no idea what Jake was referring to, Jake caught the slight clench of his jaw before he spoke. It was as much confirmation as he needed, and as much confirmation, he suspected, as he was going to get.

“Call them off. Whoever you have trailing me, call them off,” Jake said. “Or I swear –“

“You swear what?” Isaac asked. “What are you going to do Jacob? We both know you don’t have the guts to do anything to me.” Isaac stood up a little straighter, using everything in his power to intimidate Jake into backing down. 

Years ago, it would have worked.

“I swear I will bring you down,” Jake replied, feeling the anger bubble up from his stomach all the way up his throat. “I’m sure you know that there’s law enforcement crawling around my place of work. I’m on pretty good terms with the agent working on this case, and I’m sure she would like to know all about your involvement in it.” 

Jake saw the shift in his father’s expression and smiled a little, knowing that he was getting to him. “So unless you want that to happen, you’ll call this whole thing off. In fact, you should probably distance yourself from whoever hired you for this.”

With that, Jake turned and left his stunned father at the door. He got into his car and drove away, driving for what felt like days. He just kept driving, not wanting to deal with any of it.

He had always known that his family was not the white-picket-fence suburban dream they pretended to be. But even as smart as he was, he had no clue what actually went down in their house until he was, as his father called it, ‘old enough to be part of the family business’.

Apparently, the family business involved a lot of crime. 

While Jake was much more inclined to spend his time in other ways, he also felt an intense obligation to his family, one that his father capitalized on, especially if he had what he called ‘a long night’.

Whenever he hesitated, his father talked about how any sign of weakness in their family could lead to their demise, and he didn’t want his family to get hurt, did he? He didn’t want his mother or siblings to suffer for his mistakes, did he?

When Jake finally left, he cut ties completely because he had to, letting his father come up with whatever excuse he needed to explain his sudden absence. He had never looked back, never considered whether or not he had made the right call.

It was the way it had to be.

Well, until today. Today was the day that he had discovered that he had never actually cut ties with his family. Today was the day that he had found out that his past had been following him all these years, using his workplace – his sanctuary – as a front without his knowledge. Today was the day that he realized that everywhere he went, he put people in danger.

Jake didn't know what to do about it, so he drove. He drove until he heard his car sputter, the orange light telling him that he had run out of gas, angry that he hadn’t listened to its cry earlier.

“Shit,” he said, taking out his cell phone, feeling relieved when he saw that he had both battery and reception.

\-----

A while later, Ezekiel pulled up beside him, getting out and sliding into the passenger seat of Jake’s car.

“What the hell are you doing here?” Ezekiel asked, his voice sharp and questing for answers. When Jake didn’t answer, he followed up, his tone softening just enough to be perceptible. “You okay cowboy?”

“I ran out of gas,” Jake replied, looking straight ahead out his windshield, staring at the seemingly endless stretch of highway in front of them.

“An hour outside of city limits?” Ezekiel asked. “I call bullshit.”

“Well, it’s true,” Jake replied. “I ran out of gas which is why we’re here, waiting for a tow-truck.”

“Cut the crap,” Ezekiel said, turning so he could face Jake better. “You called me to come all the way out here. I’m here, so talk.”

Ezekiel didn’t say anything more, letting Jake take his time and build up the nerve to start. If Jake wasn’t so preoccupied with his own thoughts, he might have noticed the slight flicker of worry on Ezekiel’s face.

“I talked to my dad today,” Jake said.

Once that first phrase was out, Jake found himself telling Ezekiel everything about his family, about the things he had seen, the things he had done, the things he had run away from. The words tumbled out of his mouth like a rainfall that had been long overdue, his sentences flooding the car and spilling out the windows.

Ezekiel remained silent through the entirety of it and for a good thirty seconds afterwards, processing the information that was just dumped on him, Jake assumed. 

“So that’s how they found me,” Ezekiel said. Jake turned and looked at him then, surprised by the complete lack of anger in Ezekiel’s voice. “Good, I thought I was losing my touch for a little while there.”

Jake let out a surprised scoff, not really sure how to respond. Out of all the reactions that he had considered, this was not one that had even crossed his mind as a possibility.

“You’re happy about this?” Jake asked, raising an eyebrow at him.

“I’m relieved honestly,” Ezekiel said. “This answers so many questions. I’ve been backtracking for weeks, wondering where I screwed up.” When Jake just gaped at him, Ezekiel explained, saying, “look, the secret past thing? I get that. And the sucky family thing? I get that too.”

“You’re a constant surprise Jones, you know that?”

“Of course I am,” Ezekiel replied, winking. 

“You know, there is one thing that I don’t understand though,” Ezekiel said when the conversation stalled. “Why the heck did you bring me all the way out here to tell me this? I gotta say, I didn’t realize that you were this much of a drama queen Stone.”

Jake rolled his eyes leaned back in his seat, surprised by the smile that crept unto his face.

\-----

“Where the hell have you two been?” Eve asked, slightly frantic, when Jake and Ezekiel got back to the library.

“Agent Baird, I-“ Jake started to say after taking a deep breath, fully intending on telling Eve everything he knew.

“He ran out of gas and I had to go pick him up,” Ezekiel cut in. “It’s ridiculous, right? Who runs out of gas? I’ve literally been in a high speed chase before and not run out of gas.”

“Well next time tell me before you go running out of here,” Eve said, her attention solely on Ezekiel now.

“Okay mom,” Ezekiel replied, rolling his eyes dramatically.

Once the questions from the rest of the group were fielded and deflected, they got to work. 

Eve and Lamia were trying to find a viable suspect from her contacts, co-opting one of the big conference room desks and laying out names to find possible connections. Flynn and Cassandra were working on an accurate timeline of events, searching for patterns in the timing, geography, or anything else. Ezekiel was looking through the unsolved case files that Eve had brought, seeing if any of them fit the profile of their case. 

Jake was supposed to be examining the paintings, but he couldn’t really focus. He couldn’t help but feel guilty. Before today, he wasn’t sure if his suspicions about his family’s involvement were correct, but now that he had confirmation, the words “impeding a federal investigation” kept running through his mind.

His phone flashed to life, informing him that he had a text from Ezekiel that read, ‘You don’t have to tell Baird anything’. Jake snatched his phone off his desk before anyone could see it, not that anyone was paying attention to his phone.

He looked at the text, frowning. He looked up to where Ezekiel was sitting, looking completely unconcerned, casually thumbing through case files.

‘They’re part of this. I know it. I can’t keep that kind of information to myself,’ he texted back.

‘Baird’s good. She’ll get the people behind this either way. You don’t have to be the one to rat your family out’ Ezekiel wrote back, somehow managing to do so even though as far as Jake could tell, Ezekiel wasn’t even looking at his phone.

This threw him a little. In Jake’s mind, he had to tell Eve everything, despite the potential backlash from his family and to his family. The possibility of a gray area hadn’t even occurred to him. 

Neither had the potential gravity of the situation that was before him. 

It was one thing to leave his family, but it was another thing entirely to be the one to turn them in. He had threatened it, but he hadn’t really considered how serious that was until now.

Before he could debate it any further, however, Eve called them into the conference room.

\-----

“You know, Lamia has been a lot of help,” Eve informed them when they had gathered. “So we have a bit of information organized now.”

“Don’t sound so surprised,” Lamia said. “I did say I would help, didn’t I? Is it so hard to believe that I would keep my word?”

“Uh, you know what? I’m just going to blow right past that,” Eve replied, “and move on to what we know.”

“There seems to be three levels to this operation. The first level of this operation are the ones the three of you had the pleasure of meeting a few weeks ago,” Eve said, pointing at the bottom of the flow chart. “It seems like they’ve just been contracted to organize and pull off these heists. Beyond whatever they’re getting paid, they have no skin in the game. What we want to focus on are the upper two levels. Now, Lamia is pretty convinced that the Serpent Brotherhood is the second level of this operation.”

“Okay, am I the only one noticing that there are a lot of question marks on this?” Ezekiel asked, cutting in.

“Well, that brings us to what we don’t know,” Eve said, sighing. “First and foremost, we have no idea who is running this whole thing.”

“The third level,” Cassandra stated.

“Yeah,” Eve said, nodding. “We don’t know anything about them. We just know they exist.”

“This kind of thing is definitely not what the Brotherhood typically does,” Lamia said, jumping in.

“So we’re assuming that there’s another person or group working with them,” Flynn said.

“Right, but we don’t know who they are,” Ezekiel said. “All we know is that the Serpent Brotherhood is maybe involved somehow, and we don’t even know that for sure.”

“Yes, that’s true,” Eve replied, another sigh leaving her lungs. “I know we don’t know much now, but investigations like these are marathons. We can’t expect to sprint in and have everything resolved within a couple weeks.”

“Well, we also have no idea what they were smuggling, where they’ve taken whatever it is they smuggled, or what they’re trying to accomplish at all,” Ezekiel said. “We basically know nothing.”

“All very accurate,” Eve said. “Great pep talk Jones.”

“At least we have a starting point, right?” Cassandra said, looking for reassurance from the rather uncertain looking group of people standing around stacks of question marks.

Jake was constantly amazed by how optimistic Cassandra could be. He wanted to say something, to help her keep that optimism, but before he could even formulate something positive to say, Lamia jumped in.

“The pieces will come together eventually,” she said to Cassandra. She then turned her attention to Ezekiel, telling him to “stop freaking everyone out.”

“I’m just being realistic,” Ezekiel said, furrowing his brows.

“Well, stop,” Lamia replied. “Your realism is putting a real damper on this whole thing.”

“No, my realism is realistic,” Ezekiel countered. “God, this is just like that time –“

“Would you stop bringing that up?” Lamia said, cutting Ezekiel off before he could finish, narrowing her eyes at him. “That was years ago and not at all relevant to what we’re doing now.”

“Okay, enough,” Eve said, her hands landing on the table in front of her, not forceful enough to make anyone jump, but enough that the sense of finality was clear. “Let’s take a break.”

\-----

After the distraction of the meeting, Jake successfully avoided thinking too much about his family situation for the rest of the day, examining the paintings from the exhibit as well as working on acquiring another exhibit for when the gallery re-opened.

When the end of the workday came around, Jake decided, for once, to go home. The events of the morning had drained him more than he thought it would have. Just another reminder that his family still had the ability to leave the taste of fear and remorse in his mouth, even after years of trying to spit them out.

He was allowing himself some reprieve from the decision he knew he had to make. Part of him wanted to believe that not disclosing the information he had about his family and their involvement in this whole mess wouldn't make a difference, but he knew that it did. He had to tell Eve, but not today. Today he was letting himself off the hook.

When he got to the parking lot, he saw someone leaning against his car. He took a deep breath, collecting himself before continuing.

“Dad send you?” Jake asked, walking right past his brother, only looking at him peripherally. He reached for the car door, but his brother’s hand blocked his path. His eyes still focused on the handle of the car door, he asked, “what do you want Reid?”

“Dad didn’t send me Jake,” Reid said. “I came because I’m worried about you. You and your friends are messing with stuff that could get you into big trouble.”

“Is that a threat?” Jake said, finally lifting his eyes to meet his brother’s. 

“You think I would show up just to threaten you?” Reid asked, his expression morphing, contorting his features into something that may have resembled regret. “I’m just telling you to be careful.”

“And?” Jake asked, suspicious, knowing that couldn’t be the only reason his brother came to see him.

“And,” Reid replied, confirming Jake’s suspicions. “I came to tell you that we’re leaving.”

“What?”

“We’re packed up and headed out,” he continued. “Dad figured it’d be best to get out before the storm hits. He’s just doing what you told him to Jake. We’re distancing ourselves from this whole mess.”

And with that, Jake’s brother turned and walked away, leaving Jake to contemplate all the moments that led up to this one, watching them float through this consciousness, the familiar rendition of guilt singing in his ears.

\-----

“They just left?” Eve asked the next day after Jake had told her the whole story.

“Yeah,” Jake replied, his arms crossed, wanting to fidget or pace or something to get rid of the restlessness he was feeling but still standing relatively still. “I went back to the house after my brother left and it was cleaned out. They’re gone.”

“Are you okay with that?” Eve asked, frowning as she considered the new information that had just been revealed to her.

Jake shrugged, his thoughts on the matter not organized enough to be able to put them into words. When he had gone to the house, it was clear that everyone had left in a hurry. The door wasn’t even locked. The strangest part, the part that still couldn’t believe, was that his father actually listened to something he said.

“I know I’m not your boss, but if you need to take some time off to process –“ Eve’s phone started ringing, cutting off her sentence. She ignored it.

“No, It’s okay. Keeping busy, working, it’s better,” Jake said. “You can get that if you need to.” He nodded toward the phone Eve had placed on the table that was still flashing, informing her of an incoming call.

“I don’t need to,” she replied, flipping the phone over the screen faced the table.

\-----

They talked for a little while longer, but mostly about stuff unrelated to Jake’s family. Eve didn’t see the need to interrogate him, especially after what he had been through the last couple days. 

In her mind, Jake had done the right thing. The best he could have done in a situation as difficult as family. 

After Jake left, Eve stayed in the room, tapping her fingers on the table in front of her, staring at the phone that was probably filled to the brim with angry voicemails by now.

She wondered if _she_ could figure out what the right thing to do was in this situation.


	6. The Past and the Present

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Standing where I am now, standing up at all  
> I was used to feeling like I was never gonna see myself at the finish line  
> Hanging on to parts of me, hanging on at all  
> I was used to seeing no future in my sight line"
> 
> I'm not your hero - Teegan and Sara

_Agent Eve Baird had been working this case for months, chasing down this ghost of a thief that nobody had been able to catch yet._

_This case was essentially busy work. Everyone knew that it was full of dead ends and leads that led nowhere._

_She was new, and she’d been informed that all the newbies were assigned this case for a few weeks as a kind of hazing ritual, but after her few weeks were up, she asked to keep working on it._

_Her boss, her co-workers, and pretty much everyone else thought she was nuts, but she really didn’t care._

_Eve Baird did not give up on anything._

_That determination plus her excellent sleuthing skills led to the discovery of a vigilante serial killer, one who was targeting criminals just like the one who was in front of her at that moment._

_“What are you doing?” she asked, gun held in front of her._

_“I thought it was pretty clear,” Ezekiel Jones replied. He didn’t stop what he was doing, just glancing back to look at Eve for a second before returning to what he was doing. “I’m breaking into this safe.”_

_“You know I’m law enforcement right?”_

_“Yeah, the badge and gun gave it away,” he replied. “Plus you have that really tidy hair that all cops have for some reason. I’ve always been really confused about that. Is it part of your uniform or something? Anyway, if you’re gonna try and arrest me, don’t you have to read me my rights first?”_

_Eve furrowed her brow as she realized that the kid she had her gun pointed at was just that – a kid. She had expected a hardened criminal, someone she could put away without any guilt, but instead she was met with someone who looked like he was barely into his twenties._

_“I’m not arresting you,” she said, lowering her gun. “Not yet anyway.”_

_For some reason, that statement was what made him falter. He turned around, giving Eve a strange look, like he was trying to figure out what she was going to do next and coming up empty._

_“Why?” he asked, “isn’t that why you’re here?”_

_“No, I’m here to protect you.”_

\-----

“So let’s run through this again,” Eve said, her arms crossed.

“I looked up some of my contacts in the Serpent Brotherhood,” Lamia said.

“Which I was totally against you doing because it was risky and dangerous,” Eve interjected.

“And it paid off,” Lamia said, completely ignoring Eve’s disclaimer. “Because one of them didn’t know that I had left the Brotherhood and let it slip who they were working for.”

“All we have is a name,” Ezekiel said, having heard this from Lamia the night before. “Lucinda McCabe.”

“Which is a hell of a lot more than we had before,” Eve replied, nodding.

“I did some research,” Jake said, cutting in. “The name sounded familiar so I looked through some old files and it turns out that ‘Lucinda McCabe’ has bought a lot of exhibits over the last few years, a lot of which have been loaned out to galleries. Most notably, she bought up the last five exhibits we showed here just after we acquired them.”

“And based on the information we had about her,” Cassandra said. “I identified some patterns and found several other potential alibies. Morgan Fay, Flora Yang, Lane Ory, among others.”

“And I sent out some feelers,” Ezekiel said. “Did the whole ‘hey guess what I’m not really dead’ thing, and I got a lead.”

“You did what?” Eve replied, whipping her head around to look at Ezekiel. “You did not clear that with me.”

“I got a lead, didn’t I?” Ezekiel said. “That’s all that matters.”

\-----

_“Baird, you are really becoming a pain in my neck. You were supposed to arrest this bastard, not take him in like a stray dog.”_

_Eve was talking to her boss about Ezekiel, trying to convince her that it was worthwhile to consider, as she put it, ‘utilize his particular skill set’ as they had in the serial killer case._

_“He needed our protection,” Eve said._

_“You know where he’d be super safe?” her boss asked. “Prison.”_

_“He’s just a kid,” Eve said. “Aren’t we supposed to be trying to keep kids out of prison?”_

_“He’s legally an adult,” her boss replied. “And I think the ‘keeping him out of prison’ ship has sailed.”_

_“I don’t get it,” she continued, leaning forward and clasping her hands on the desk in front of her. “You asked to keep working this case even after we all told you to let it go. You solve it, plus another, which is great, but now you want to let this kid walk?”_

_“No, I want to give this kid a chance,” Eve said. “He’s smart and capable. He could be an asset.”_

_“He could be a disaster,” she replied._

_“I’m willing to take that chance,” Eve said, her brows furrowed as she stared down her boss with her best ‘I am not going to let this go’ look. It was the way she got her to agree to let Eve take this case in the first place._

_“Fine, but if this turns out bad –“_

_“I’ll take full responsibility.”_

_“Fine. Go.”_

_Eve walked out of her boss’ office, walking to her office where Ezekiel was waiting. She took a second outside the glass door before going in with the good news. She saw him fidgeting, trying to keep his hands busy._

_He was actually nervous, she noted. That made her all the more certain that she was making the right choice._

_“What’s the verdict? Do I have to make a quick exit before you try to arrest me?” Ezekiel asked, flashing her a grin that was supposed to assure her that he didn’t have a care in the world._

_“I’m not arresting you,” Eve said, smiling back at him. “Not yet anyway.”_

_“Not yet works fine for me.”_

\-----

Baird and Flynn had left the librarians and Lamia behind to go talk to the lead that Ezekiel had identified.

“Elaine Garlot,” Flynn said, mostly to himself as they drove. “Do we know her connection to Lucinda McCabe?”

“Hey, you were at the same meeting I was,” Eve said, her eyes focused on the road ahead of them.

The last few weeks had been a little awkward between the two of them. This was the first time in their two-year partnership that they hadn’t been constantly in contact. Eve knew it was her fault. She was so preoccupied with this case and Flynn was trying to give her some space to deal with it.

She appreciated it, but she also knew it was driving him crazy, which made her feel really bad about this whole situation.

She knew he was refraining from asking about her history with Ezekiel, which really was impressive because Flynn Carsen was not one to let things like this go.

Part of her really wanted to tell him everything, but she didn’t have all the information herself. Much like this case, she had a lot of question marks. 

Once she knew everything, she decided, she would tell Flynn everything.

\-----

They arrived at what was listed as the current address of Elaine Garlot.

“Ms. Garlot?” Eve asked when a woman opened the door to the unassuming bungalow they had arrived at. The woman nodded, looking concerned but not confused. “My name is Agent Eve Baird, and this is my partner, Dr. Flynn Carsen –“

“You’re here about Morgan?” Elaine asked, before Eve could finish, shifting her weight from one foot to the other. “Come in.” She stepped aside, ushering Eve and Flynn into her home and looking around to make sure nobody saw them.

“Gale, sweetie, go to your room and play okay?” Elaine told the young boy when they got to the living room. “Please, sit,” she said as she gestured at the couch, sitting on one of the chairs opposite it.

“You don’t seem surprised that we’re here,” Eve said, sitting down on the couch and taking a brief glance around the room. The house seemed completely normal.

“Well, this isn’t the first time that people have knocked on my door looking for Morgan,” Elaine said. “Usually it’s a cop. Sometimes it’s not a cop. I’ve gotten used to it now. This is what happens when your sister is a criminal I suppose.”

“She’s your sister?” Flynn asked, unable to keep the surprise out of his voice.

“Yes, my sister,” Elaine replied. “And no, I don’t know where she is or what she’s doing. I don’t want to know. When I was younger, I did everything I could to get away from my connection with her. I changed my name. I moved five times in seven years.” She paused and sighed before continuing. 

“But I’ve got a family now,” she said, her eyes flitting over to the stairs for a second. “I can’t just uproot them, so I just try to live my life as normally and as separately from her as possible. I wish I could help you, I really do, but I can’t. I’m sorry.”

“No, that’s perfectly alright,” Eve said, getting up. “If you think of anything,” she handed Elaine her card, “please call me.”

“I will,” Elaine said. “But believe me, my sister wants nothing to do with me as much as I want nothing to do with her.”

\-----

“So how’d it go?” Ezekiel asked them as soon as they entered.

“Dead end,” Flynn replied. 

“Well, I’ll just do some more snooping, get more information, and we’ll get another lead,” Ezekiel said, and Eve could already see the cogs turning in his head.

“Not on your own you won’t,” Eve said, knowing that there wasn’t any way to talk him out of it. If he was going to do something dangerous, she was at least going to make sure that he was as safe as possible.

“Fine,” Ezekiel replied. “I'll take Lamia.”

“No way,” Eve said. “She’s just as reckless as you. Take Jake.”

“Fine.”

\-----

_“Baird, why are you covering your eyes?” Ezekiel asked, looking back at her while he picked the lock of a door they suspected led to a stash of drugs that were about to hit the streets._

_“You’re doing something illegal,” she replied. “I can’t be part of this. Also, I don’t condone your actions at all.”_

_The two of them had been working together successfully for the last month or so. It was definitely not easy at first, with Eve having to constantly convince both her superiors and Ezekiel that this was a good idea, but it had been paying off._

_The greatest pay off for Eve, however, was that she could see that she was right about Ezekiel, and after years of chasing down bad guys, it was felt good to finally have chased down one that wasn’t that bad._

_In fact, she suspected that he was pretty good._

_“But you’re not stopping me,” Ezekiel said, smiling and shaking his head._

_“Hey, I know better than to try to stop you from doing anything,” Eve said._

_A minute later, the door was open and the two of them were creeping in. Eve turned on her flashlight, trying to see in the pitch-black building._

_Ezekiel stilled, signalling Eve that he thought he saw something. Eve was amazed by how good his night vision was. Suddenly, a crash echoed in the room, followed by the sound of footsteps, and Ezekiel took off running._

_“JONES,” Eve said, running after him. They had specifically discussed this before they had come here. Ezekiel was not supposed to go off on his own, especially when there was potentially dangerous criminal involved._

_Just as she was making a mental note to lecture him about it later, she heard a shot ring out and a loud thud as someone hit the ground._

\-----

“You okay there?” Flynn asked as Eve’s eyes kept flitting back to the clock as they ate dinner in the librarians’ offices. 

“They should have been back by now,” Eve replied, pursing her lips as she checked the clock for the millionth time that minute. “I knew I shouldn’t have let them go off on their own.”

For some reason, that was what broke the dam for Flynn and he finally asked the question he had been dying to ask for the last few weeks.

“What is the deal with you and this kid?” he asked, putting down his fork. “You spent the last two years talking about how he’s this dangerous criminal, and the moment we catch him, you start acting like the kid’s mother or something.”

“I’m not his mother,” Eve said. “And we didn’t catch him. He called us.”

“Does that make a difference?” Flynn asked.

“It does.”

\-----

_“It’s just a flesh wound Baird,” Ezekiel said, wincing as Eve placed a cloth on his shoulder, instructing him to keep pressure on it. “This isn’t the first time I’ve been shot at. I’m fine.”_

_“You could have died Jones,” Eve said._

_“But I’m not dead,” Ezekiel said, rolling his eyes at her. “Not yet anyways.”_

_“I swear to god Jones,” Eve said, a frown fixed on her face. “If you ever pull something like that again, there will be hell to pay.” Eve took a mental step back from the panic she was feeling before she continued. “We talked about this. You need to stop putting yourself in excessively dangerous situations.”_

_“Danger’s my middle name,” Ezekiel said, trying to diffuse the situation the only way he knew how._

_“Ezekiel,” Eve said, stopping him in his tracks. “Never again, you understand me?”_

_Ezekiel stared up at her from where he was sitting, his face betraying genuine emotion for the first time since they had met. He blinked it away, apparently surprised by its existence, replacing it with his usual cocky grin._

_“Okay_ mom _,” he said, rolling his eyes. There was something in the way he said it, though, that made Eve certain that she had gotten through to him in some way._

\-----

“We got some info,” Ezekiel said when he and Jake got back from meeting up with some old contacts of Ezekiel under the pretence of wanting to ‘get back in the game’.

“What’d you find out?” Eve asked, masking the fact that, up until the moment they walked in the door, she had been wracked with worry.

“Morgan Leffe, aka fifteen million different alibies,” Ezekiel started, “is a crime lord, although nobody’s really sure what she does. She used to work with a sister, Anna, but she mysteriously disappeared a few years ago.”

“According to Ezekiel’s sources,” Jake said, “nobody really knows what she’s after. Only really high-ranking members of the Brotherhood have any real idea what’s going on.”

“I guess it’s my turn again,” Lamia said.

“No, it’s too soon,” Eve said. “You’ll raise flags if you do this too fast. We wait. Work this by the book for a while, and then we can consider you going into the Brotherhood again.”

\-----

_“Eve, I swear, I didn’t do anything,” Ezekiel said, following Eve as she stormed away from him. She’d caught him talking to one of his contacts. “He tried to contact me before, but I ignored him, so he tracked me down and cornered me so I had to talk to him. What was I supposed to do?”_

_“You should have told me the second he tried to contact you,” Eve replied. “God damn it Jones, I should arrest you right now.”_

_“But you’re not going to, right?” Ezekiel asked, oddly sincere about this whole thing. “Not yet?”_

_She sighed, biting the inside of her cheek. “No, not just yet,” she replied. “But if this happens again –“_

_“I’m done, I get it,” Ezekiel said, cutting her off._

_“You tell me,” Eve said, finishing her sentence. “Next time, you tell me so I can have your back, got it?”_

_“Okay,” Ezekiel replied, nodding._

\-----

“We’re going, right?” Lamia said to Ezekiel when she was certain nobody was listening.

“I haven’t decided yet,” Ezekiel replied, looking genuinely conflicted over a decision that would have been a no-brainer for him years ago.

“You don’t have to come you know,” Lamia said, perched on the edge of Ezekiel’s desk and not facing him as they talked.

“I’m not going to let you go alone,” he said, pretending to look at something on his phone.

“You know I can handle myself,” she said, rolling her eyes. “I’m just giving you the option of not pissing Baird off.”

“Hey, if you’re going, I’m going,” Ezekiel said.

“Been a while since I’ve heard that,” Lamia replied, smiling.

\-----

_“Slow down, slow down,” Ezekiel said as Lamia talked rapidly at him on the phone._

_Ezekiel and Lamia had been on the outs ever since Ezekiel had started working with Baird. The two of them had barely talked since then, so when Ezekiel got a call from Lamia that morning, he knew something was wrong._

_He listened as she detailed what had happened with her and the Serpent Brotherhood, the organization that she had been working for for the last two years._

_“They want both of us dead,” she said, sounding out of breath, as if she was running somewhere. “I only know about it because I overheard someone talking about it.”_

_“Why?” he asked. Ezekiel had always steered clear of organizations like the Serpent Brotherhood, not really considering himself much of a team player. Plus, they seemed creepy. Lamia, on the other had, didn’t share his reservations._

_“Uh, well,” Lamia replied, hesitating. “Apparently you helped your lady cop friend arrest a bunch of their guys and destroyed one of their operations. People have been killed for a lot less than that.”_

_“Okay, that I get, but why do they want you dead?” he asked._

_“Who even knows,” she replied, trying to brush it off. “I probably pissed off the boss somehow.”_

_“It’s because of me,” Ezekiel said, the realization hitting him. “They want you dead because of your connection to me.”_

_“Look, don’t worry about me –“_

_“I’ll meet you at the usual place. Twenty minutes tops.”_

_“You don’t have to do this,” she said._

_“Twenty minutes tops,” he replied, hanging up._

\-----

_Eve walked into her office early in the morning. She had come in early that day so she could meet Ezekiel when he got in and make sure he was ready for his evaluation._

_After years of working as an unofficial consultant, they had finally convinced the higher ups that Ezekiel should be made an official special agent. It had taken a lot to get them to that point._

_It had taken a lot more to get Ezekiel to the point where he was advocating for himself, to the point where he accepted that he wasn’t as bad as he thought he was._

_Eve was as proud as she could be, and she intended on telling Ezekiel that today._

_She took a sip from her morning coffee before placing it on her desk. As she did, she noticed a piece of paper with Ezekiel’s handwriting on it. She picked it up, worry suddenly seizing the back of her throat as she read its contents._

I’m really sorry Eve, but I can’t do this. This isn’t who I am. Thanks for trying. – Ezekiel Jones

_Eve turned the paper around, part of her certain that she’d find a ‘gotcha!’ on the other side, but it was blank, devoid of any explanation or indication as to why Ezekiel had left._

_She didn’t get it. Everything was going so well, why did he leave? Where had he gone? After all his progress, why was he sabotaging himself?_

_She had so many questions and no answers._

_There was one thing she knew for certain though: the idiot was trying to get her to give up on him._

_He should’ve known better._

_Eve Baird did not give up on anyone._


	7. Disappointing Parents

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "It's been a long week  
> and all the lines come down heavy on me
> 
> It's been a long week  
> I'm finally feeling like it's okay to break  
> into a thousand pieces  
> no one can replace
> 
> only I can find my way
> 
> It's been long day  
> and I just want to hideaway..."
> 
> Been a long day - Rosi Golan

Cassandra had a headache.

This wasn’t a rare occurrence, but today the headache wasn't due to the death sentence in her brain. Today, it was a headache due to the unexpected appearance of her parents.

They did what they always did: showed up out of the blue, talking about how they had been worried sick about her and why hadn’t she been taking their calls and there was no way she was so busy that she couldn’t spare five minutes for a phone call. They talked like that for a couple minutes, spending time in their summer house of faux-concern before moving back to their home in criticism city.

So, Cassandra did what she usually did: nodded and smiled and tried to ignore them the best she could before ducking out of her apartment to go to work, leaving them to, she assumed, snoop through all her stuff.

There was a reason why Cassandra’s apartment looked more like a well-decorated hotel room than anything else. When you had overprotective parents who really didn’t understand the concept of privacy – something that had amplified since she had gotten sick – you couldn’t afford to personalize your space.

Cassandra’s office at the library was a whole different story, however. She had knick-knacks and pictures and books all over the place. She was glad to have a place she could call her own, a place she could be comfortable, but most of all, she was glad to have a place to go to get away from her parents while they were visiting.

As soon as she got to her desk she started calculating how long she could stay at the library before it would raise suspicion in the minds of her parents.

“You look tired,” Lamia commented when Cassandra walked through the door. Cassandra didn’t know how, but Lamia beat her to work every morning, and Cassandra was always early. 

It was just another thing that bugged her about Lamia.

“My parents are in town,” Cassandra said, keeping her face neutral, not really wanting to get into it.

“Ah,” Lamia replied, a look of understanding crossing her face as she turned to face the computer screen in front of her. Cassandra tilted her head, noting to herself that this was the first time that an answer of hers had been satisfactory to Lamia.

As everyone else started arriving, they all fell into the now-familiar rhythm of work.

“If only we had one of the frames to study,” Jake mused out loud. “If we knew the dimensions of the inside of the hollow frames, we could maybe narrow down what could be in there.”

“Huh,” Cassandra said, squinting as an idea occurred to her. “Do you have pictures of the frames before they were stolen? Different angles?”

“Yeah, of course,” Jake replied, opening up the files so that Cassandra could see them.

“Okay, give me a second,” Cassandra said, her eyes darting back and forth as all the potential dimensions of the hollowed-out part of the frame flew before them. She eliminated a few based on structural integrity, and all the ones that were obviously much too small to hold anything of substance, leaving her with a handful of options.

“Cassandra?” Jake said, looking at her nervously.

“One second,” she said, completely focused on what was before her. “I’ve almost got it.” She felt herself get a little wobbly.

“Cassandra, your nose,” Jake said, putting one hand on her arm to steady her and handing her a kleenex with the other.

“It’s fine. It happens sometimes,” she said, brushing away the rest of the formulas.

\-----

“Maps?” Eve asked when Jake and Cassandra revealed what they thought could have been hidden in the frames.

“Old, priceless maps,” Jake replied. “Ones that are worth a mint on the black market.”

“But why would they want them?” Flynn asked. “Surely there must be an easier way to make money.”

“Yeah, the ‘why’ of the matter has yet to be ascertained,” Cassandra said. “But I asked Ezekiel, and he said that a collection of maps that contained ‘phantom islands’ on them were stolen from one of the galleries on our list. It could be a coincidence, but -”

“I don’t believe in coincidences,” Eve said.

\-----

When the end of the day arrived, Cassandra was exhausted.

This exhaustion was made worse by the fact that, when she was about to leave, she spotted her parents sitting on a bench right outside of the library doors, presumably waiting for her to emerge from her safe haven.

“What’s going on princess?” Lamia asked as she came upon Cassandra, completely frozen by the front doors.

“My parents,” Cassandra said, nodding her head towards them. “They’re just sitting out there, waiting to dole out some classic Cillian family guilt and judgement on me.

“I don’t know if I can handle any more ‘you’re not living up to your potential’ and ‘make the best of the time you have left Cassie,’ than I already have,” she continued. “I mean, I left to get away from all that. I didn’t want them dictating what I did with my life and judging me when I didn’t follow exactly what they wanted me to do anymore. I can’t handle yet another lecture about using my illness to better humanity before it’s too late. I just can’t do it. I don’t want to fight with them right now. I don’t want to justify my choices to them.”

“Okay, come with me,” Lamia said, walking away from where they were standing, not even glancing behind her to make sure that Cassandra was following her.

\-----

They made their way to the gallery and Lamia held up the police tape, ushering Cassandra under it. Cassandra put two and two together then, figuring that they were heading to the secret passage where she had first met Lamia.

“Why are you helping me?” Cassandra asked when they reached the not-so-secret room in the gallery.

“I know a thing or two about disappointing parents,” Lamia said. “Honestly, my parents would have probably loved to have you for a daughter. Instead, they got me. Rebellious child to adolescent mess to criminal. I’m not really someone they can brag to the extended family about, you know?”

They stopped, the questions that they both wanted to ask echoing in the silence that expanded before them.

For reasons that were secret even to her, Cassandra decided to answer the question that hadn’t been asked, shrugging as she explained about the tumour in her brain that would most likely kill her.

“I suddenly went from star student, bound for greatness, to a sick person in a bed. They didn’t take it well,” she said, sighing. “It doesn’t matter. I knew they only paid attention to me because of my accomplishments even before this happened. It was actually kind of a relief to get out from under their thumb for once, I guess. That sounds ridiculous.”

“No, I get that,” Lamia replied, nodding. “I mean, everything I ever did was to get away from my parents.”

The two of them were now sitting in the not-so-secret room, held there for no other reason than each other’s company. They talked until it was no longer acceptable for two people who barely liked each other to stay there any longer, at which point they left through the secret passageway, making their way out of the library.

"Oh shoot, I parked my car out front today," Cassandra said once they reached the parking lot where she typically parked her car. "They'll see me if I go that way."

"I'll drive you," Lamia said, not missing a beat.

"You have a car?" Cassandra asked, raising an eyebrow at her.

"I have Ezekiel's," she replied, dangling the keys in front of Cassandra's face. "He won't mind."

\----

The drove in silence besides Cassandra giving Lamia, who turned out to be a very safe driver, directions to her apartment.

"Thanks again," Cassandra said as she got out of her car, getting a shrug from Lamia as a response.

"Oh, and Ezekiel and I will pick you up on our way tomorrow morning," Lamia said, reminding Cassandra that "your car is still at the library" when she gave Lamia a perplexed look.

"Right," Cassandra replied. "Thanks. Again."

\-----

That night, once her parents had realized that Cassandra had given them the slip and had returned to Cassandra's apartment, after she had given them some excuse about having "met a colleague" and how it had made more sense for her to come directly home, the Cillian family debate over Cassandra's future began.

Over dinner, Cassandra's parents fussed and fretted over her health, her job, her friends, and pretty much anything else they could get their hands on.

She had told them the very abridged version of what was going on in the library, leaving out the part where someone had had a gun near her and how she was working with two former criminals.

Her parents were convinced that her job was not right for her, even though Cassandra told them outright that she was happy. She had gotten in the habit of being very direct about her feelings with them a while ago. There was much too much danger of them saying 'well you never said that' if she wasn't clear.

Not that it mattered.

It went how it always went, with Cassandra realizing for the millionth time that her contribution was not at all necessary and eventually shutting up and shutting down.

"And this apartment is not ideal at all Cassandra," her mother said. Cassandra wondered how it was possible for her mother to find a way to criticize every portion of her life. "The neighbourhood alone -"

"Doesn't seem safe," her father chimed in, finishing her mother's sentence. She had to hand it to them, they really were meant for each other.

"It's perfectly safe," Cassandra said, breaking her silence as she gathered their plates and utensils and placed them in the sink to soak. She didn't have the energy to deal with dishes tonight.

When a knock on the door interrupted the extremely pleasant evening they were having, Cassandra let out the breath she had been holding in the pit of her lungs the whole night, grateful to whoever was on the other side of the door for the break.

"Lamia?" Cassandra said as Lamia pushed her way past Cassandra and closed the door behind her.

"I don't think I was followed," Lamia said, looking out the peephole of Cassandra's door. "I drove around for a few hours before looping back here. I figured they wouldn't think I'd come back here, especially if the Serpent Brotherhood sent them. They know my go-to is to leave town."

Lamia turned around, noticing that her and Cassandra weren't alone. 

"Oh," Lamia said, frozen in place where she was at the door. "Hello."

Cassandra on the other hand, didn't seem to be at all concerned her parents. Instead, she was more concerned about Lamia, her attention solely focused on the woman in front of her, the rest of her surroundings melting away into the periphery.

"You're sure you weren't followed? Where did you park Ezekiel's car? Should we call Agent Baird?" she asked.

Lamia looked back and forth between the concerned Cassandra and her bewildered parents a few times before answering Cassandra's questions.

"Yeah, uh, I'm pretty sure. I ditched it a while ago. Switched cars, and then ditched that car a few blocks away and walked here."

"You should have called Agent Baird or Dr. Flynn. Someone. You shouldn't have walked," Cassandra said, reaching around Lamia to make sure that the lock was secure. "You can stay here tonight. I don't want to risk anything. I have a spare room -" 

Cassandra's mother cleared her throat, catching Cassandra's attention at last. 

"I'm sorry, we haven't been introduced," Cassandra's mother said. "Emily Cillian, and this is my husband, Howard. You are?"

"Lamia," she replied, looking for the trap in Cassandra's mother's words.

“I’m very sorry, but we were just in the middle of a family discussion before you got here,” Emily said. “If you could just give us a moment.”

Cassandra sighed. “The spare room is the door to your right down the hall. Make yourself at home.”

Lamia walked past Cassandra and her parents, feeling the tension that was hanging between them. There was very little in this world she found more uncomfortable than family tension.

“Cassandra,” Emily said once the door to the spare room clicked shut. “What is going on?”

“What was that girl rambling on about when she came in here?” Howard asked, crossing his arms over his chest. “Nothing she said sounded very -”

“Legal,” Cassandra’s mother said, finishing his sentence. “Or safe. I really don’t think she is...appropriate company.”

Cassandra held her tongue, trying to let them rant themselves out, hoping that then they’d be more willing to leave her alone.

“Your mother and I have talked about it,” Howard continued. “And we really think it would be best if you came back home with us.”

“What?” Cassandra asked, shocked into breaking her silence. The suggestion completely threw her off balance and she suddenly felt as if she was about to fall off a cliff into the abyss below.

“Cassandra,” her mother said, the tone in her voice warning that she knew that Cassandra was about to argue with them, something that wasn’t tolerated. “We are just trying to do what’s best for you. Here, you’re all alone, but at home -”

“I’m not alone,” Cassandra objected.

“Cassandra, if the rest of the people you’ve decided to surround yourself with are anything like that _criminal_ who just walked through your door,” Emily said, scoffing. “I mean, really, Cassandra, you should know better than to associate yourself with people like that. How well do you even know this girl?”

“Not that well,” Cassandra said, wavering a little before finding her footing. “But I know her well enough to know that she looks out for the people she cares about, and that she’s a good person, and that I trust her.”

“We still think it would be best for you -”

“Well I don’t agree,” Cassandra said, interrupting her mother before she could get her point out. “I think the best place for me right now is here, and you know what? I’m done worrying about what you think. I want to be a librarian. I want to stay here. You can either respect that or...or you can just deal with it. I decide what’s best for me. End of story.”

\-----

Once the front door had shut, Lamia peeked her head out the door, having heard everything that Cassandra and her parents had said to each other.

The walls were definitely not soundproof.

"I did steal that car," Lamia said, self-conscious of the fact that this whole situation made her feel very out of place and awkward.

"It doesn't matter. Do or do not, it doesn’t matter to them. The only thing that matters is their perception of the truth," Cassandra said, taking a moment to compose herself. “Sorry you had to hear all of that.” Cassandra looked over at Lamia from where she was sitting on the couch, smiling to seal her apology.

"Nothing I haven't heard before," Lamia replied, knowing that there was one glaring exception to her statement - nobody had ever defended her, not in the way that Cassandra just had.

"Well, you just had a show," Cassandra said, getting up and clasping her hands together in front of her. "Do you want some dinner?"

\-----

"So my car is?" Ezekiel asked Lamia over the phone later that night.

"In a better place," Lamia replied.

"Awesome," he said. Lamia could tell that he was shaking his head, even over the phone.

"Baird's going to pick us up tomorrow," Lamia said. "And I'm sure you could convince that cowboy of yours to give you a ride."

"Okay, you’re obviously fine. I'm hanging up now,” he replied.

Lamia smiled to herself before suddenly finding herself thinking about Cassandra, her smile withering away. She tried to convince herself that the reason why Cassandra so often made it into her thoughts was because Cassandra was such a strange character, but even to herself, those excuses were starting to seem a little thin.

She shook herself free of the thoughts that roamed her head. She should know better by now.

\-----

When Cassandra opened her front door the next morning, it was Jake and Ezekiel rather than Eve that she found on the other side.

“We have a bit of a problem,” Jake said.

“What? What’s going on?” Cassandra asked, closing the door behind them, checking the peephole just in case.

Ezekiel started talking about what they had seen when he and Jake got to the library that morning, but before he could give them any further explanation, the sound of knocking stopped them.

They all froze right where they were, each of them looking at each other to make sure that the others had just heard what they had heard, and none of them certain what their next move should be.

“It’s Eve,” Eve said, her voice muffled by the door. “I know you’re in there. We have a bit of a problem.”


	8. A bit of a problem

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "We tried to bury it and rise above..."
> 
> Bury it - Chvrches

“What’s going on?” Cassandra asked as Eve closed the door behind her, leaning her back against it as if to keep someone out.

“Flynn is stalling as best he can, but we need a game plan,” Eve said, looking at Ezekiel, clearly operating on the assumption that everyone knew what was going on.

“How’d you get away so fast?” Ezekiel asked.

“I said I needed to take a call,” Eve replied, shrugging.

“That works?” Ezekiel asked, raising his eyebrow at Eve.

“If you walk away fast enough it does.”

“What is going on?” Cassandra asked again, a little more forcefully this time, determined to get an answer out of one of the multiple people who had barged into her apartment that morning.

_Earlier that morning_

_"Nice to finally meet you Agent Baird," Dulaque said, meeting Eve's steely gaze with one that was uncomfortably relaxed. "I've heard a lot about you over the course of your career. People were calling you a rising star, the one to watch."_

_"That's very kind of them," Eve said, her tone imparting a message that didn't match the content of her words in the slightest._

_"I suppose," he replied, smiling. "On the other hand, people _do_ love to watch stars fall right out of the sky.”_

_Eve's jaw tightened at the veiled threat. Neither of them said anything for a few moments, Dulaque letting the threat boil within Eve's mind, and Eve wondering if she could somehow both take the path of least resistance and also beat Dulaque up._

_"What did I do to warrant a visit from such a prominent member of the community?" Eve asked, letting the venom in her voice speak for her._

_"I'm here to personally deliver some evidence Agent Baird," he replied. "I'm sure your superiors have brought you up to date about a certain criminal you have within your midst, and I'm equally sure that you wouldn't let such an individual roam among honest citizens such as ourselves if you had any idea what he had done."_

_"I'm sure," Eve said, curling and uncurling her fingers._

_Dulaque placed a large file on the desk dividing the space between them. "I'm sure you'll make the correct choice Agent Baird," he said, leaving with no further pomp._

_Eve let out a sigh, placing her hands flat against the desk and hanging her head, thinking about the fact that Dulaque had told her to make the correct choice, not to do the right thing._

_\-----_

_"Shit," Ezekiel said, grabbing Jake's arm and dragging him away when he saw Dulaque through the open doorway leading into the librarians' offices._

_"What? Jones, what the heck?" Jake protested, looking behind his shoulder as Ezekiel pulled him around the corner into an adjacent hallway. "Talk to me. What's going on? What did you see?"_

_"Serpent Brotherhood," Ezekiel said, whispering._

_"What?" Jake replied, his voice dropping to a whisper to match Ezekiel's. "Are you sure?"_

_"Am I sure? Are you serious? Of course I'm sure," Ezekiel said. "I wouldn't drag you into a hallway for no reason."_

_"Okay, so we leave," Jake said._

_"I saw Eve in there," Ezekiel said, biting his lip as he thought about his options._

_"Okay, so we wait," Jake said, nodding._

_They waited until they saw Dulaque leave and rushed into the offices._

_\-----_

_"Baird, are you okay? What the hell is Dulaque doing here?" Ezekiel asked, a slight panic flooding his voice. "Does he know Lamia's here? Does he know she's helping us?"_

_"He's not here for her," Eve said, her eyes averted from Ezekiel's. "He was here to tell me to arrest you." Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Ezekiel relax a little._

_"Wait, Dulaque is part of the Serpent Brotherhood?" Jake asked._

_"He's their leader," Ezekiel said, "and a total creep."_

_"Yeah, I remember," Jake said. "Friend of the family," he said when he was met with confused stares from Eve and Ezekiel._

_“So what’s our play here?” Ezekiel asked._

_“We keep going with our investigation,” Eve replied, staring at the so-called ‘evidence’ that she had stashed in one of the cabinets when she heard Jake and Ezekiel coming in. “We work the case as best we can. It’s the only thing we can do.”_

_“Or,” Jake said, hesitating for a second before continuing, “I could go in. There’s very little chance that Dulaque knows that my family and I are on the outs. My dad kept it way under wraps.”_

_“No way,” Eve replied._

_“No way,” Ezekiel said at the same time._

_Just then, they heard Flynn’s voice over-projecting from the hallway._

_“It’s so good of you to come all this way just to see us deputy director,” Flynn said, calling to them more than talking to her. “I’d love to show you around if you’d like. Or take you to get some coffee before we go see Eve – Agent Baird?”_

_They heard the muffled sounds of another voice, presumably Eve’s boss, talking to Flynn as they made their way to the offices._

_“Get out. Go,” Eve said, adding a “now” when Jake and Ezekiel didn’t move to leave._

_“Cassandra’s,” Ezekiel said before he left, letting Eve know that they would meet her there._

\-----

“Eve’s boss showed up,” Ezekiel said, continuing the briefing that was interrupted when Eve arrived. “After Dulaque showed up. Basically, it's been a really stellar morning.”

“They both want me to arrest Ezekiel,” Eve explained.

“Surprise, surprise,” Ezekiel muttered to himself. He wasn’t unfamiliar with the idea of authority figures wanting him arrested and put away somewhere, that was for sure. 

“What evidence does she have?” Jake asked, having not stuck around to hear the deputy director’s case against Ezekiel.

“Nothing,” Eve said, pausing for a moment before continuing. “Well, sort of nothing.”

“Shit,” Ezekiel said, shaking his head.

“What does she have?” Lamia asked, chiming in for the first time since everyone had arrived. 

“She basically corroborated Dulaque’s story. It was all unofficial,” Eve said, “but -”

“But it’s her word against mine,” Ezekiel said, putting the pieces together, “and I’ll give you one guess as to who’s more credible.”

“And Dulaque?” Lamia asked, tensing as she said the name of her former employer. She knew that nothing good could come from a visit from Dulaque. That rule was particularly true in a situation where they were on opposing sides. “What’s the story he’s telling?”

“He has tons of evidence,” Eve replied, pursing her lips. “None of it is factual, but it looks factual, which is bad.”

“So what do we have to do?” Cassandra asked, jumping straight into plan mode. “We need to do something, right?”

“We need to get anything on this Morgan lady,” Jake said. “Lucinda McCabe. Whatever. Or get someone from the Brotherhood to talk. Make the frame-up story seem legit somehow.”

"Okay, Flynn’s got the deputy director, so we’re good there for a few hours" Eve said, her arms crossed over each other, tapping her index finger on her arm. 

“Hours?” Lamia asked, questioning whether or not Flynn could keep someone busy for that long.

“Hours,” Eve replied, nodding. "Oh, and you should all take these." She reached into the pocket of her jacket, placing four earbuds on Cassandra's kitchen table.

Ezekiel groaned. "You know I hate these," he said. "I hate having someone else's voice in my head. Throws me off my game."

"Well your 'game' involves a team now," Eve replied, "which means we need to communicate with each other.”

"Fine," Ezekiel said, taking one of earbuds off the table and shoving it in his pocket.

You three,” she continued, looking at Jake, Cassandra, and Lamia, “feed us info while we’re out there questioning suspects. Anything that’ll throw them off their game and make them more likely to give something up.”

“Wait, if you’re going to question people from the Brotherhood, shouldn’t I come with you?” Lamia asked, standing up from her seat.

“Take you directly to the people who are trying to kill you?” Eve asked. “Hell no. Besides, you can give us information that people outside of the Brotherhood shouldn’t know. It’ll make them doubt the people around them and make them more likely to talk”

“Fine.”

\-----

_A few days ago_

_“Deputy director Obel, nice to see you again.”_

_When Nat Obel raised her head from the paperwork that had started to make a snowy mountain on her desk, she felt her heart rate quicken in the worst possible way._

_“Mr. Dulaque, what a pleasant surprise,” she said, rising to extend a hand for him to shake. “And please, it’s Nat. What brings you here?”_

_“I’m here to report a crime.”_

_This happened from time to time. He would show up, ‘report a crime’, and make it very clear that his organization was not to blame._

_“Well, there’s no need to come directly to me for that,” she replied, crossing her arms in front of her. “So let me ask you again: what brings you here?”_

_“Like I said,” Dulaque said. “I’m here to report a crime. A very high profile criminal manipulating one of your agents. Pretending he’s being framed, to be specific.”_

_“And, let me guess, you’re somehow implicated in this?”_

_“You always were a bright one.” His smile strangled her, making her feel as if someone was sticking their hands in her gut and churning its contents around._

_They continued the conversation in silence for a few moments, both knowing for certain that everything that had been said and would be said was complete and utter crap. Nat couldn’t see a way around it, however, having spent a considerable amount of time in her career trying to fight Dulaque. She figured that her early attempts to bring him down was the exact reason why he insisted on coming to her time and time again._

_He knew that her bosses had told her to specifically let it go. He had won, and this was his way of gloating._

_“What evidence do you have against this so-called criminal?” She asked._

_“None, yet. Right now I just have a name,” Dulaque replied. “Ezekiel Jones.”_

\-----

Ezekiel and Eve had hit a lot of dead ends that morning, but they had finally struck gold.

“All I know is that this woman keeps coming in for meetings with the boss,” he explained, looking over his shoulder as he talked to Ezekiel and Eve. “Nobody would ever see any cars or anything, but she’d still be there, chatting up the boss. And now we’re doing all this work for her. Robberies and smuggling and stuff that we don’t usually do, you know?”

“She has to be paying a lot if Dulaque has the whole Brotherhood working on this,” Ezekiel said.

“Oh yeah, she’s like old money or something,” he replied. “The stupid thing is that she doesn’t even want all this stuff to sell or anything.”

“I thought the maps were worth a lot on the black market,” Eve said, narrowing her eyes.

“Yeah, maybe,” he said, shrugging, “but that’s not why she wants them. She wants them to find her sister or something. Apparently her sister went missing a while ago and they agreed to meet on one of the phantom islands if they ever lost one another. Seems like sentimental bullshit to me, but the payday’s good, so I’m not complaining too much.”

“If you ever feel like complaining,” Eve said.

“I know where to find you, yeah I get it.”

\-----

“Shit,” Lamia said, chewing on her thumbnail as she listened to what was happening.

“What’s wrong?” Cassandra asked, feeling nervous just from looking at Lamia. “Do you think he’s lying?”

“No, no,” Lamia replied. “I just realized something.”

Lamia sighed as Jake and Cassandra stared at her, waiting for her to reveal what she had realized. She took that second to contemplate how her life had gotten to this point before she went down yet another rabbit hole.

“I think know who Morgan is.”

“What?!” Eve said from the other end, her exclamation loud enough that the rest of them winced at the sound in their ears.

“She didn’t go by Morgan then,” Lamia continued, “or Lucinda, um, but that story about her sister - that’s something we came up with together. It was an inside joke between us.”

“The two of you came up with it?” Cassandra asked, her brow furrowing. “Together?”

“Yeah, but I haven’t seen Tamsin - that’s what she used to go by back then - in years,” Lamia said.

“Wait, Morgan is _Tamsin_?” Ezekiel asked, chiming in. 

“Um, I can tell you everything I know about her, but I don’t know how much it’ll help,” Lamia said over top of Ezekiel's shock, trying to just blow past it. “Like I said, I haven’t even seen her in years.”

“If we can figure out her patterns from back then,” Cassandra said, “we can probably find out where she’d go now or what her next move is. Humans are creatures of habit.”

“We should probably map it to the information that we have at the library,” Jake said. “Agent Baird, is the deputy director clear of the library?”

“Not yet, but I can definitely get her clear,” Eve said, stopping the car and getting out. “Ezekiel, take the car and go meet them at the library. I’ll call the deputy director and get her to meet me here.”

“That’s the plan?” Ezekiel asked, shaking his head but doing exactly what Eve asked him to do.

“Just go,” Eve said, getting her phone out of her pocket and dialing.

\-----

Ezekiel had barely made it past the front door of the library before someone came up behind him with something that felt very much like a gun at his back.

“You know, I really didn’t think that I’d be being held at gunpoint this much as a librarian,” Ezekiel said, trying to stop himself from showing any signs of being afraid, despite the fact that he could hear his heartbeat clearer than the words that were leaving his mouth.

“Shut up and move.”

The gunman guided Ezekiel up the stairs to the offices, where Jake, Cassandra, and Lamia already were. The room was filled with a palpable sense of fear and tension, and at the centre of it all was a woman who seemed to be right in her comfort zone.

“Ah, Mr. Jones,” the woman that Ezekiel assumed was Morgan said as he was brought in. “How nice of you to join us. We were just having a chat. Catching up.” She looked pointedly at Lamia then, smiling at her.

"You know," Morgan said, her smile still plastered to her face as she continued her speech, "it is a shame that we had to meet this way. I feel like, in another universe, we could have been pals."

She paused, as if to consider her own words.

"Oh well," she said, shrugging.


	9. Hostage Situation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “You’ve been up and down  
> You’ve been low  
> Troubled sea so deep  
> Troubled home no sleep
> 
> You’ve been flying so high  
> Avoiding the road  
> Pretending to not feel alone”
> 
> Vagabond - Misterwives

“So what is this?” Ezekiel asked, crossing his arms in front of him as he was guided to where the others were standing. “Execution, hold up, tea party? I’m asking for a friend.”

\-----

Eve and Flynn were clumsily trying to explain to the deputy director why she had to drive to the middle of nowhere to pick Eve up when they heard chatter in their ears.

“Shh,” Eve said, shushing her boss, which was, admittedly, not the best idea, but the word _execution_ was definitely serious enough to warrant the shushing.

“Agent Baird, generally speaking, when one is on thin ice, one should probably not jump up and down,” Nat said. She had spent a lot of time this morning getting dragged along on a verbal whirlwind by Flynn, who she still wasn’t sure she liked, and it had put her in a bit of a mood. “Now, unless you can give me a good reason -”

“Listen,” Eve said, handing over her earpiece. The deputy director listened for a moment before sighing and shaking her head. She moved back to her car and motioned for Flynn and Eve to follow her as well.

\-----

“You know this little team you have going is very interesting,” Morgan said, motioning to where the four of them were standing. “Ties to organized crime, thieves, hitmen. Very interesting indeed. Although,” she stared right at Cassandra, “I don’t quite know where you fit in. They’re all stuck here, you know. Trapped. You could go.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” Cassandra replied, gritting her teeth. She could feel fear bubbling up from her stomach to her throat and she couldn’t help but notice how similar this felt to being at the doctor’s office. 

“Oh, of course not,” Morgan said, as if that was the answer she had been looking for, “because you’re trapped too, aren’t you? That poor, genius brain of yours is killing you. Slowly but surely.

“Death always causes people to try and find meaning in the strangest of places, doesn’t it?,” she continued, the smile never wavering from her lips. “So what, are you trying to do something meaningful before you die? Or maybe you’re looking for excitement. No,” she thought for a second before continuing, “maybe you’re just looking for a family.

“‘You don’t know anything about me’,” Morgan adopted a higher pitch voice, performing Cassandra’s portion of the conversation before Cassandra could speak up herself. “Oh but I do,” she continued, reverting back to herself. “I do my research. And I know you’re the odd man out my dear. The weak link. The one who will cause the structure to come tumbling down -”

“That’s enough,” Lamia said calmly. She took a step towards Morgan, disregarding the sounds of guns being readied to fire. “You’re going to let them go, and we’re going to have a chat.”

“As much as I like it when you take charge,” Morgan said, tilting her head to smirk at Lamia, “I don’t think you’re in much of a position to do any negotiating my dear.”

“If you were going to do anything, you would have done it by now,” Lamia said. “I’ll say it again. Let them go, and we can talk.” She said nothing more, hoping that the years hadn’t changed Morgan so much that she was wrong about this. 

“Escort them outside,” Morgan said after several tension-filled moments had passed, her smile somehow growing brighter.

Her bodyguards moved immediately, ignoring the protests from the others and pushing them out the door. 

“You want to know what my next move is,” Morgan stated once everyone else had been cleared out, leaving just her and Lamia in the Librarians’ offices.

Lamia nodded.

“You want to know what I’ve been doing all these years?” She said, this time her words forming a question, unsure for the first time Lamia could remember since they had met years ago.

Lamia shrugged, unsure for what felt like the billionth time that day.

“I’ve already severed ties with the Serpent Brotherhood,” Morgan said, ignoring the question they both weren’t sure they wanted answered. “They’re going to be angry. They’re going to lash out, I’m sure. You’d better be ready to deal with that. I’m sure you’re aware that they don’t tend to play nice when they’re angry.”

Lamia sighed, looking away from Morgan. “I know,” she said. “You know I know.”

“I do,” Morgan replied, crossing her arms. “Like I said, I do my research.” 

“But you’re not going to do anything with what you know,” Lamia said, the question absent from her words. Both her and Morgan knew how this went down. It wasn’t Morgan’s style to get involved directly. It was what made her untouchable. 

If you didn’t touch anything, nothing could touch you.

“Tamsin -”

“I haven’t been ‘Tamsin’ in years,” Morgan said, stopping Lamia from continuing. “Now, I’m sure you have a lot of work ahead of you, as do I.”

Lamia wondered to herself why she thought she could talk to Tamsin - no, _Morgan_ \- after years when she hadn’t really been able to talk to her when they had actually known each other.

“Hopefully we don’t cross paths again,” Lamia said, sighing “because then I might actually have to kill you.” 

Lamia caught Morgan’s smile out of the corner of her eye and smiled herself.

\-----

“Are you okay?” Eve asked, out of breath. She hadn’t even waited until the car had fully stopped before she raced from the car to the entrance of the library. Flynn ran up as well, just a couple steps behind her, both of them having left the deputy director to deal with parking.

“We’re fine,” Jake said. “Lamia’s still -”

Eve didn’t let him finish before she went tearing into the library and up to the offices. She found Lamia totally alone, leaning against one of the desks, her hands clenching the edge of the desk behind her and her eyes boring a hole into the ground.

“She’s gone,” Lamia said when Eve froze at the doorway.

“Okay,” Eve replied, nodding, letting Lamia dictate where the conversation was headed rather than asking her directly about her run in with her past.

“We had a good run you know” Lamia said, “Tamsin and I. But, of course it all blew up in my face as it always does.”

"You want to know what I think?” Eve asked, walking over to where Lamia was and sitting down next to her.

“I think you’re really good at attaching yourself to a cause,” Eve said, continuing when Lamia nodded. “Whether the cause is the Serpent Brotherhood, or you and Ezekiel protecting each other from the world, or whatever the heck it is you did with Morgan.”

“Your point is?” Lamia asked, rolling her eyes.

“My point is that, you know, maybe it’s time for you to forge your own path,” she replied.

“Yeah, like that’s an option,” Lamia rolled her eyes, scoffing, “There’s no such thing as a fresh start. Not really.”

“What if there was?”

Lamia looked at Eve, furrowing her brow in confusion, but before she could question Eve further, the rest of the team came through the door.

“Oh, you’re fine,” Jake noted, looking around them as if he expected Morgan’s bodyguards to jump out and attack them. 

\-----

“So she’s definitely gone then?” Ezekiel asked. With the excitement from the hostage situation over, the rest of the team was now badgering Lamia about Morgan.

“She’s going to cut ties with the Serpent Brotherhood,” Lamia said, nodding. 

“She told you that?” Jake asked.

“Yes,” Lamia replied, nodding more emphatically.

“How do we know she’s telling the truth?” Cassandra asked, crossing her arms in front of her.

“I know her,” Lamia said, “ and she’s not going to stick around when there’s law enforcement breathing down the Serpent Brotherhood’s neck. She prefers not to let people know she even exists. People who exist have the ability to get caught.”

“Well, is that it then?” Cassandra asked. “Will the Brotherhood back off too?”

“Morgan seems to think they’ll lash out,” Lamia replied, shrugging. “I think I agree with her.”

“It’s hard to say what they’ll do next,” Eve said, biting her lip. “They very well may ‘lash out’ like you said, but we don’t know in what way they’ll do that.” She paused for a second. “I think we might need to bring the Deputy Director in on this one.”

“What? Why?” Ezekiel asked immediately, his brows knitting together.

“She has the most experience with them,” Eve replied. “From a law enforcement point of view I mean,” she added when Lamia started to protest.

“She would be an asset,” Flynn chimed in. “And it may stop her from arresting all of us.”

“Dude, I was just starting to like you,” Ezekiel said.

“Okay here’s the deal,” Eve said, stopping the bickering. “A lot of shit’s gone down today and we’re not going to solve anything if we’re all freaking out and panicking. So go home, rest, recuperate, and we’ll figure this out tomorrow.”

“But -”

“There’s no immediate threat as long as we’re all careful and don’t do anything stupid,” Eve continued. “Morgan’s gone, the Deputy Director is off our backs for now, and we all need a day off. So go home.”

\-----

Cassandra had been home for just over an hour, pouring over the Serpent Brotherhood files that Ezekiel had managed to procure for her before they had left the library, trying to look for patterns in their behaviour in order to determine their next move when she heard a faint knocking at her door.

She looked through the peephole, but couldn’t see anything through it, as if someone was blocking her view from the outside. Confused, she opened the door, and when she did, Lamia fell through, nearly collapsing into her arms.

“What’s going on? What’s wrong?” Cassandra asked, her voice coated in panic as she helped a pale Lamia get to the couch. When she laid her down and stepped away, she saw that her hands were covered in blood. 

“Oh my god.”


	10. Plans

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "And the walls kept tumbling down  
> In the city that we love  
> Grey clouds roll over the hills  
> Bringing darkness from above"
> 
> Pompeii - Bastille

“Why the hell did you open the door?” 

“Are you really getting mad at me right now?” Cassandra asked, helping Lamia to the couch before running to grab a towel to slow the bleeding.

“If you don’t know who is at your door, you shouldn’t answer your door,” Lamia said, lecturing Cassandra on safety while pressing the towel Cassandra handed her against her recently-stabbed stomach.

“But if I didn’t answer the door, you would be in the hallway right now, bleeding out,” Cassandra said, pulling out her phone. “I need to call someone.”

“No,” Lamia said, reaching out to grab Cassandra’s arm, nearly falling over from the effort. Cassandra quickly steadied her, telling her, “just lie down. I’m calling Agent Baird.”

Lamia shook her head, grimacing and reiterating her previous statement.

Cassandra sat on the coffee table next to the couch, one hand on her phone, the other holding Lamia’s free hand. Lamia stilled for a moment, glancing over to Cassandra’s face, expecting worry, maybe frustration. 

Instead, she saw determination, focus. 

“Fine,” Lamia said, sighing and turning away from Cassandra again, leaving her hand where it was. “She is going to be annoying about it though, just warning you.”

\-----

“You’re going to be fine,” Eve said to Lamia once she was done stitching up the stab wound.

“Of course I am,” Lamia replied, groaning as she tried to sit up and failed. “If they wanted me dead, I’d be dead already. This was their way of warning us to back off.”

“Someone should really teach them how to use their words,” Cassandra said, standing a good distance away from the couch, arms crossed over each other, her fingers absently rubbing her elbow.

“Don’t worry about me princess,” Lamia said. “I’m a survivor.”

“A survivor who needs to rest,” Cassandra replied, shaking her head. She thought it rather ridiculous that Lamia was the one who was trying to reassure her when she was the one who had gotten injured. She wanted to do something to make herself useful in some way, but instead she stood there, felt helpless, and fidgeted. 

There was a knock on the door, making Cassandra jump slightly.

“Cassie, open the door,” she heard Jake’s voice say. She sighed in relief, her breath leaving a little shaky from her lungs, letting her shoulders pull away from her ears a little. “It’s us.”

Even though she knew she wouldn’t find someone she cared about injured and bleeding on the other side, her hand still shook a little before it allowed her to turn the handle. When she did, Ezekiel came tearing through, not bothering with pleasantries before going right to interrogating Lamia about the person who had stabbed her.

“It was them wasn’t it,” he said, more a statement than a question.

“I am not telling you,” Lamia replied, “not now anyways. You have your ‘I’m going to do something reckless and stupid’ face on.”

“Oh yeah,” Eve said, chiming in. “I know that face. That’s the face you had before you got shot at the second time.”

“You’ve been shot at more than once?” Jake asked incredulously.

“Long stories,” Ezekiel said at first, shrugging. Then, thinking on it, he said, “actually they’re not. I got shot _at_ three - no, four - times while I was working with Baird. I only got shot once though, because I can pretty much outrun anything.”

“Except for that one bullet,” Jake noted.

“I wasn’t actually running away from that one,” Ezekiel replied, “so it doesn’t count.”

“Okay, it so doesn’t matter,” Eve said, waving her hands in front of her to get her team to focus on the task at hand. “And, if at all possible, I would really prefer if you avoided getting shot at at all, okay?”

“It wasn’t like it was a big deal or anything,” Ezekiel said, rolling his eyes. “It barely nicked me.”

“Only you would say that getting shot isn’t a big deal,” Jake said, shaking his head.

“The point is that you have that face right now,” Lamia said, “and I’m not telling you -”

“The point is that you got stabbed,” Ezekiel said, interrupting her and stopping everyone in their tracks as they were reminded of the reason they were all standing around in Cassandra’s living room, the red stains surrounding them, a portrait of the near-tragedy they were involved in.

“I’m fine Zeke,” Lamia replied. “I’m fine.”

Ezekiel huffed, irritated at the helplessness he was feeling, wanting somehow to control what happened next, wanting to make sure that nobody else got hurt because of him.

“Okay, okay, I get it,” Ezekiel said, crossing his arms in front of him. “I’m not going to do anything ‘reckless and stupid’, alright?”

“Good,” Lamia and Eve said simultaneously.

“But we do need a game plan,” Ezekiel continued, “because we can’t stay on the defence anymore. Not with them. Not after this.”

“Ezekiel’s right,” Eve said, nodding, “and I really think we need to bring the Deputy director in on this.” She held up her hand when Ezekiel started to protest. “Just hear me out. This isn’t just to stop her from arresting all of us, which would be a benefit, but like I said before, she has the most experience with the Serpent Brotherhood, and a lot of face-to-face with Dulaque.”

“Yeah, the way a puppet-master and a puppet have a lot of face-to-face,” Ezekiel said, rolling his eyes and shaking his head.

“It wasn’t always that way,” Eve replied. “When she first became Deputy director, she tried to take him down. Nobody’s really sure what happened, but she never seems happy when Dulaque comes to call.”

“That doesn’t mean she’s gonna help us.”

“We’ll never know until we ask her.”

Ezekiel considered it a moment before finally conceding, saying, “fine, but everyone else has to be okay with it too.”

“I think I speak for everyone when I say that you were the only one who had a problem with it,” Jake said, smirking a little.

“Fine,” Ezekiel said again, pouting.

\-----

The team split up. 

Ezekiel and Eve went to meet the Deputy director and Flynn at the library while Jake, Cassandra, and Lamia stayed behind to map what they knew about the Serpent Brotherhood in order to find some kind of pattern regarding what their next move might be.

“Eve,” Ezekiel said as Eve opened the driver’s side door when they had arrived back at the library. She looked at him for a second and then closed the door again, turning slightly towards him, her brow crinkled in worry. “Why’d you close the door?” he asked.

“This seems like a closed door conversation,” Eve replied. “What is it? What did you do?”

“Why do you assume I did anything?” Ezekiel asked, raising an eyebrow at her.

“I’m not assuming,” Eve said, “I’m inferring based on previous data.

“But jokes aside,” Eve continued, “what’s going on?”

“I think you should let the Deputy director arrest me,” Ezekiel answered.

“What?” Eve said, her expression quickly shifting from worry to outrage. “That’s ridiculous Ezekiel, I’m not going to let her arrest you!”

“Not for real,” Ezekiel explained. “Just as -”

“What, bait?” Eve asked incredulously, flipping back to worry when she realized what Ezekiel was saying. “Bait for the Serpent Brotherhood?”

“GPS tracker, audio and visual communications,” Ezekiel replied, nodding, laying out his plan. “Then when they come for me, which I’m sure they will, they’ll lead us right to them.

“It’s the best course of action,” he continued before Eve could interject. “We have no leads, no idea what they’re going to do next, but we know they’re gonna escalate. If they’re willing to stab someone as a warning, who knows what they’ll do next.”

Eve took a deep breath, turning away from Ezekiel and looking at the concrete of the parking structure of the library out the front window.

“How long have you had that plan in your back pocket?” Eve asked after a while, still unable to look Ezekiel in the eye. “It doesn’t sound like you thought of that on the drive from Cassandra’s to here.”

“I thought about it when we first left,” Ezekiel replied, “me and Lamia.

“About that -” Ezekiel started, wanting to take the time to work everything out now. Just in case. Even though he had a good reason, he knew how much he had hurt Eve.

It wasn’t often that you got to say the things that needed to be said, and it wasn’t often that you got a second chance to say the things that you should have said but didn’t, and Ezekiel didn’t want to waste that chance.

“No,” Eve said, shutting him down immediately. “This is not a five minute conversation for us to have in a car before you go do something stupid. This is a conversation we will have, but it’s going to be much longer and it’s not going to be now.”

Eve opened her door again and got out of the car, waiting for Ezekiel to follow suit. When he did, she continued, saying, “now is the time for your plan to be shot down by the Deputy director because she’ll definitely share my concerns.”

\-----

“I think that’s an excellent plan,” Deputy director Obel said when Ezekiel pitched his idea to her, leaving both Ezekiel and Eve in shock. 

“Deputy director, this plan puts a civilian at risk,” Eve replied.

“I would hardly call Agent Jones a civilian,” she replied, a hint of a smile passing her lips. “And while I insist that the necessary precautions be put in place, I think Agent Jones’ plan is solid and worth a shot. Plus, I would personally love to bring that bastard Dulaque down.”

Eve couldn’t believe her ears.

\-----

“There must be a reason why they’re picking these locations,” Cassandra said, half to Jake, half-muttering to herself. With Lamia resting somewhat comfortably on her couch - she refused to relocate to the spare bedroom - Cassandra had turned her attention to finding out where the Serpent Brotherhood was.

“Cassie,” Jake said, calling her from the kitchen table he was working at. “Cassandra,” he called again when she didn’t respond.

“Yeah?” Cassandra replied, not looking away from the wall of information she had, trying to find the pattern that she knew was right in front of her.

“Your phone’s ringing,” Jake said, smiling and shaking his head as he watched Cassandra fumble for her phone before returning to the case files he had in front of him.

“Yes, yes, hello?” Cassandra said, hoping she had answered before her phone had sent the caller to voicemail.

“Cassandra, don’t say anything and listen,” she heard Eve say.

Cassandra nodded but then, remembering that Eve couldn’t see her, said, “I’m listening.”

Jake looked up from his work, watching Cassandra pace as she listened to whoever was on the other end of the phone call. Eventually she nodded, said, “I’m on it,” and hung up.

“Agent Baird needs me to get something,” Cassandra said before Jake could ask her who was on the phone, fidgeting and just generally giving off an air of being extremely nervous. “Um, that was her on her phone.”

“Okay,” Jake said, raising an eyebrow at her.

“Can you -” Cassandra motioned towards Lamia.

“Yeah, I’ll make sure she’s good,” he replied, nodding.

“Well, alright,” Cassandra said, backing away, nearly running into her front door, “okay then. I’ll see you in a bit.”

\-----

“You’re sure about this,” Eve asked Ezekiel for the fifth time since they had decided to go through with the plan.

“Yes, I’m sure,” Ezekiel said, choosing, in that moment, to go against his instincts to make some sort of sarcastic comment. Choosing instead to be reassuring, telling Eve, “it’ll be fine.”

“It better be,” Eve said, crossing her arms. “That means no unnecessary provocation of the targets. You do this completely by the book, understand?”

“It’ll be fine,” Ezekiel said again.

“Completely by the book,” Eve said.

“Completely by the book,” Ezekiel repeated, nodding once as if to seal their agreement.

They were sitting in the interrogation room of a local precinct, waiting while the Deputy director made some calls and made sure that the news of Ezekiel Jones’ arrest circulated the gossip mill sooner rather than later. Eve hoped that this would be over by day’s end so that Ezekiel didn’t have to spend any time in an actual cell. Knowing his past, she knew that it wouldn’t be good for Ezekiel to behind bars. 

They both jumped when they heard the doorknob click, the nervous energy permeating every inch of the room until any movement or sound became amplified.

“I’ve done my part,” Deputy director Obel said, making sure the door was firmly shut behind her before she started talking. “I’m pretty sure it won’t be that long until I get a call from Dulaque asking to have a face to face with you. And when that happens -”

“You’ll reject him, making Cassandra his only way in,” Eve said, finishing her sentence for her, trying to tell herself that they had planned everything perfectly.

Part of her knew that there was no such thing as a perfect plan.

There was always something they didn’t think of.

“What do we do until then?” Ezekiel asked, leaning back in his chair, his hands cradling the back of his head. 

“You’ll have to interrogate him until Cassandra gives us the signal,” Deputy director Obel replied, shrugging. “We won’t know when that will be, and we have to keep up appearances, so if you don’t have material, make it up and make it good.”

“Oh, you don’t have to worry about that,” Eve said, smirking as she reached into her bag and pulled out a stack of files. “I have tons of material.”

“Oh god,” Ezekiel said, leaning his head further back to stare at the ceiling in exasperation.

“Let’s start with the first case you worked with me,” Eve said.

Ezekiel groaned, wondering if he could just call the Serpent Brotherhood himself.


End file.
